BOTANICS, EDINBURGH

Academic | The Picts Pavilion

Royal Botanic Garden, Scotland | 2019

BRIEF

The Picts gallery/pavilion is located within Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden. The programme gave us the idea to design an exhibition space that is also a monument honouring the enigmatic Picts, a late-antiquity population that resided in the northeast of Scotland. This project explores the potential of pre-fabricated concrete materials in a constrained 20m2 site. The conceptual diagram is based on a Pictish symbol (Figure 1), which consists of three discs intersected by a crossbar and has led some researchers to hypothesise it could symbolise a cauldron. The pavilion, made of prefabricated concrete components, resembles a lotus flower that is blooming on top of a long and narrow underground gallery. The purpose of this gallery is to present exhibits involving plant root systems and underground biology. Like Pictish iconography, little is known about the roots of plants. Technology-assisted scientific investigations have revealed that roots are more than just "water pipes". For example, one may not be aware that a mushroom's roots can extend for miles or that tree roots are the links that enable nearby trees to create bonds of "friendship," or what scientists refer to as Mutualistic Facilitative Relationships. Their roots not only connect the individual trees; they also contribute to the transfer of nutrients and the prevention of disease. Scientists who have sought to illustrate these connections (Mycelium networks) have produced beautiful maps that are strikingly similar to the neural networks found in human brains. It appears that these subsurface networks have central hubs inside forests, similar to the brain (See Figures 2-4).  

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