Peter Randall-Page

Seed Sculpture and ‘The Core’ New Education Resource Centre Building At Eden Project Cornwall. A collaboration between Peter Randall-Page and Grimshaw Architects.

SEED

‘An object of contemplation and meditation, a still, quiet hub; both fossil and seed’.

Peter Randall-Page

 

In 2003 Peter Randall-Page was commissioned to collaborate with Jolyon Brewis of Grimshaw Architects on the design of a new education building for the Eden Project in Cornwall. The result is a building whose roof structure is based on the geometric principles underlying plant growth. At the centre of the building is a specially designed chamber housing ‘Seed’, an enormous granite sculpture based on the same spiral phyllotaxis pattern as the structure itself.

Our challenge for the Core at Eden Project was to design a contemporary building which took inspiration from plant forms. Peter became an intrinsic part of our design team and help to inspire us to find the geometric basis of the building in the pattern of plant growth known as ‘spiral phyllotaxis’. One part of his contribution became the centrepiece of the building: Seed. I cannot imagine the building without this amazing piece of sculpture. It is as integral to the finished building as Peter’s contribution was to the design of the Core. I believe that our mutual enjoyment of our collaboration is apparent in the Core and, speaking for myself, working with Peter has been one of the highlights of my career. Jolyon Brewis, partner of Grimshaw Architects

Peter Randall-Page’s sculpture ‘Seed’ is like a vital organ in our Core building for Eden. It is a work of art that relates to the building enclosure by geometry generated from the Fibonacci series. Whilst we know that people will ebb and flow through the building and the use of it will certainly change, it is rather wonderful to think of this solid and unchanging rock at its centre. Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, Chairman of Grimshaw Architects

‘Seed’ is a work of art that needs no intercessor, no confirmation of quality from external sources. For me it was a profoundly personal experience that, to my deep satisfaction, is shared by the thousands who come to lay their hands upon it. Yes, it made the building complete, but it went deeper than that. It has substance and not just that substance consisting of mass. No, this has substance of another kind; understood by all those who see it, run their hands over it’s curves, who look up and see the shadows changing with the movement of the sun, see sand dunes and oceans, see symmetry and chaos. They know that this is important. It is a narrative for our age, of beginnings, of birth, of knowledge. It satisfies because it performs the role of all great art, it is at once a statement and a question, where away and hope meet as strange yet comforting bedfellows. Tim Smit, Chief Executive, Eden Project

More information about the project:

It took Peter and his team four years to complete

Installed in 2007

Sculpture was craned in through the roof of the Core Building

It was hewn from a 167 tonne boulder of granite from the De lank quarry in Cornwall

The completed sculpture weighs more than 70 tonnes and was carved from a single piece of granite

Fibonacci pattern

Peter plotted the Fibonacci pattern of nearly 2,000 circles onto the 3d from. The growth pattern on which the sculpture is based is organic and bears no relation to a horizontal and vertical grid, which made the task particularly difficult. It was a complex process, involving a balance between geometric accuracy and organic freedom.

The sculpture all but fills the chamber
It has been a long-standing ambition of Peter’s to make a sculpture whose mass would almost totally fill an architectural space. Like Magritte‘s painting ‘The Listening Room‘ in which an over-sized apple fills a room, there is a surreal dimension to the experience of seeing ‘Seed‘ occupying the space and coming to within 250 cm of the walls of the chamber. The monumental ‘Seed’ makes a play on scale offering an Alice in Wonderland-like experience: Alice who grows to fill a room and also shrinks to be dwarfed by ordinary objects.

The Chamber
In the manner of Rothko, who stipulated the dimensions and light conditions of the rooms in which his work should be seen, the chamber and art work were conceived as one. Peter wanted to separate this inner sanctum from the bustle outside to give the chamber a meditative and contemplative quality. ‘Seed’ is lit by the natural daylight filtering down through the central aperture. The changing weather and seasons play across the sculpture’s undulating surface.