ZOOMORPHIC
C.F. Møller and Partners

Name of project
Darwin Centre Phase 2
Natural History Museum
Location
London		 Country
England
Dates
2001 - 2007
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The Darwin Centre, Phase Two, nests an opaque, rounded form within a transparent, box-like envelope. The architects saw the rounded form as purely sculptural at first. Gradually, however, the metaphor of a cocoon inside a glass specimen container became inescapable.
As the project developed, the architects were forced to modify their initial design. It had been based
on a smooth plaster finish, and they found that this might crack. This led them to run steel reinforcing bands around the central form, giving it a woven appearance more than ever like a cocoon.