Temporary building helps Botanic Gardens Grow

As part of the garden’s expansion plans, ‘The Gateway’ is a new £15.7 million visitor centre designed to bring to life the world of plants and the scientific work of RBGE through a unique set of interactive experiences and activities. Due for completion in Spring 2009, the new building will sit on the footprint of existing buildings at the West Gate, including the existing RBGE shop.
Requirement: Popular with visitors, the shop offers a range of plants as well as horticultural based books and gifts, and whilst it will ultimately be located within The Gateway, RBGE opted for a temporary building to maintain this facility throughout the 18-month construction programme.
Solution: Spaciotempo installed a 150 m2 temporary building with steel reinforced UPVC cavity walling and a double skinned air filled roofing system to ensure a high degree of insulation and minimal condensation. Complete with fully glazed windows, insulated automatic doors and heating and flooring system, the temporary building creates a comfortable environment for the public to shop as well as the right temperature for the plants sold in the store.
The restricted nature of the rural site together with the desired location for the temporary building made it extremely difficult to transport the unit through the gardens. With every detail of this project requiring meticulous planning, the Spaciotempo installation team adopted a strategic approach to have the temporary building delivered and installed with five days.
The flexibility and capabilities afforded by Spaciotempo allowed it to utilise one of its smaller vehicles that was able to manoeuvre through the tourist attraction without causing any disruption to visitors.
Benefit: Ian Lawrie, RBGE manager comments: “The gift centre plays an important role in making sure our visitors get the most out of their visit to the gardens with a memory of the day to take away. It also brings in extra funding which we are able to plant back into the maintenance of the centre.
“Spaciotempo's solution to our difficult brief was expertly delivered with cost effective results and couldn’t be matched by its competitors.
“The quality of design the unit exhibits is also in keeping with the high standards we maintain as a prestigious tourist and research centre.”