Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners - National Space Centre

Inauguration
Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners
National Space Centre
Leicester, UK

Photo: Jim Cartwright

The National Space Centre, situated on the banks of the River Soar in Leicester, is scheduled to open on June 30, 2001.

Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners, who also designed the Eden Project in Cornwall, won the competition to design the Space Centre in 1996.

"The Space Centre is a building entirely driven by science, emerging as an idea from the space scientists at Leicester University. It is one of the new generation of interactive science centres, concerned not only with rockets and satellites and space travel, but more widely with our whole place in the cosmos".
Hugh Pearman

Photo: Jim Cartwright
The American Thor Able and the British Blue Streak rockets.

The 140 foot high ?Rocket Tower?, the main feature, dominates the local skyline. The semi-transparent tower, clad with high-tech ETFE "pillows" manufactured by specialist suppliers Skyspan International, was designed to house the attraction's largest artifacts, including two huge rockets.
Several "decks", connected by a series of staircases, are placed at various heights in the tower. To allow easier access during replenishment of large exhibits the side of the tower can be partly detached.

Photo: Jim Cartwright

The main body of the Space Centre Building, a perforated stainless steel box, is built partially below ground level within the walls of the old storm water tanks. Below the domed roof is a planetarium and a space research center. The entrance to the Space Centre is reached from a courtyard, where the Challenger Learning Centre building is located.

The site in the Abbey Meadows area, a 14.5 acre brownfield on Exploration Drive, previously housed the Abbey Tanks, a sewage treatment works, and was donated to the Space Centre project by Severn Trent Water. A council tip was also formerly operational on part of the Space Centre site. This was relocated before construction works commenced, and the Space Centre leases that section of land from Leicester City Council. In the summer of 1999 the existing road leading to the site, Corporation Road, was widened, and a completely new road, Exploration Drive, built and opened.
That first phase of works involved a total of about 250 people working on the site. Around 20,000 cubic meters of "muck" was removed from the tanks, with 15,000 cubic meters going back in as part of the stabilizing process. The rest was retained for use later in the project - mainly for landscaping purposes. In total, around 5,500 cubic meters of concrete has been poured into the site.





				Features
		Inauguration Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners National Space Centre Leicester, UK Photo: Jim Cartwright The National Space Centre, situated on the banks of the River Soar in Leicester, is scheduled to open on June 30, 2001. Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners, who also designed the Eden Project in Cornwall, won the competition to design the Space Centre in 1996. "The Space Centre is a building entirely driven by science, emerging as an idea from the space scientists at Leicester University. It is one of the new generation of interactive science centres, concerned not only with rockets and satellites and space travel, but more widely with our whole place in the cosmos". Hugh Pearman Photo: Jim Cartwright The American Thor Able and the British Blue Streak rockets. The 140 foot high ?Rocket Tower?, the main feature, dominates the local skyline. The semi-transparent tower, clad with high-tech ETFE "pillows" manufactured by specialist suppliers Skyspan International, was designed to house the attraction's largest artifacts, including two huge rockets. Several "decks", connected by a series of staircases, are placed at various heights in the tower. To allow easier access during replenishment of large exhibits the side of the tower can be partly detached. Photo: Jim Cartwright Photo: Jim Cartwright The main body of the Space Centre Building, a perforated stainless steel box, is built partially below ground level within the walls of the old storm water tanks. Below the domed roof is a planetarium and a space research center. The entrance to the Space Centre is reached from a courtyard, where the Challenger Learning Centre building is located. The site in the Abbey Meadows area, a 14.5 acre brownfield on Exploration Drive, previously housed the Abbey Tanks, a sewage treatment works, and was donated to the Space Centre project by Severn Trent Water. A council tip was also formerly operational on part of the Space Centre site. This was relocated before construction works commenced, and the Space Centre leases that section of land from Leicester City Council. In the summer of 1999 the existing road leading to the site, Corporation Road, was widened, and a completely new road, Exploration Drive, built and opened. That first phase of works involved a total of about 250 people working on the site. Around 20,000 cubic meters of "muck" was removed from the tanks, with 15,000 cubic meters going back in as part of the stabilizing process. The rest was retained for use later in the project - mainly for landscaping purposes. In total, around 5,500 cubic meters of concrete has been poured into the site.