The first project Walters & Cohen completed under the framework agreement for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew was Climbers and Creepers, a fun, interactive education centre designed to teach children aged 3 to 9 about the relationship between plants and animals. The project was intended to be temporary but was very popular and remained in use for more than 15 years.
It was housed in the old Cycad House at Kew, which was originally built in the 1980s as a temporary glasshouse for plants during renovation work to the Palm House. As part of our renovation, the entire glass cladding was removed and the steel structure strengthened, then re-clad in a combination of solid polycarbonate clear panels and triple-wall polycarbonate panels.
Climbers and Creepers provided an assembly area, interactive educational facilities, and internal and external play areas for children. Toilet facilities, stores and a manager’s office formed a ‘pod’ in the centre of the glasshouse. Located above these facilities was a mezzanine floor accessed via a stairway and platform lift. The interactive learning and play area to one side of the central pod was designed and installed under the supervision of At Large, a specialist exhibition design firm who see the centre as ‘a landscape of the imagination’.
