We’re incredibly honoured to receive the prestigious Gold Award at the Wood Awards 2025 for the Urban Nature Project at the Natural History Museum!
Named “the UK’s best new timber project”, the transformed gardens are home to two new buildings: the Nature Activity Centre; and the Garden Kitchen, which were designed alongside structural engineers engineersHRW and specialist timber design and sub-contractors Xylotek.
The Nature Activity Centre is an education building which includes a classroom, support areas for the garden staff and a science lab. The single storey building includes an asymmetric pitched roof formed from solid Douglas Fir rafters and purlins which dramatically overhangs by several meters to provide an outdoor covered space for learning, as well as celebrating the capture of rainwater. The Garden Kitchen is a timber and stone pavilion building, functioning as a cafe, events space and a seasonal storage and display space for exotic plants, in the spirit of historic Victorian garden structures. The structural frame, which is constructed from Douglas Fir glulam timber, rises up in the main cafe to create a taller glazed lantern.
Our team worked closely with landscape architects J&L Gibbons, and led a multidisciplinary design team including Gitta Gschwendtner, engineersHRW and Max Fordham. The design team worked alongside Museum scientists to sensitively develop a series of outdoor living galleries, providing opportunities to learn about and explore nature.