The National Space Centre, a landmark Millennium Project for the East Midlands, is one of the United Kingdom’s leading visitor attractions devoted to space science and astronomy. It is located in the city of Leicester, England, on a former brownfield site on the north bank of the River Soar. The building, which is designed as an amenity represents a significant environmental improvement both for the immediate neighbourhood and for the city of Leicester as a whole. The site formerly housed a buried storm-water tank, sewage treatment works (donated to the project by Severn Trent Water) and a council tip. The building was designed by Nicholas Grimshaw, and it opened to the public on 30 June 2001.

The centre arose from a partnership between the University of Leicester’s Space Research Centre and local government agencies. The total construction cost was £52m, £26m of which came from a Millennium Commission grant, and the rest from private sector sponsors. It is run as an educational charity, and offers science workshops for school children of all ages. The design comprises two principal elements: a two storey lightweight steel building clad in perforated metal panels and an annexed rocket tower clad in a space-age skin of ETFE cushions. Together, these elements house an exhibition venue of international standing and a new centre of excellence for education and research affiliated to the University of Leicester. The site also houses the prefabricated Challenger Learning Centre, an interactive facility for school children simulating the situation of a space mission.

The main exhibition space is large, double height and built on a lightweight 14m-grid steel frame, capable of accommodating a flexible arrangement of exhibition display systems as well as the full integration of structure and service zones. It has been created as a square-plan structure in the renovated shell of the disused storm-water tank, thereby cost saving on foundations and ensuring definite environmental benefits in reduced materials use and waste production. The low-lying block, contains administrative, teaching and research facilities and a new planetarium. The podium is wrapped in a double skin, comprising an inner wall of fenestration and silver sinusoidal steel cladding with a homogeneous outer screen of perforated stainless steel panels. In practical terms, this affords privacy to the internal offices and research facilities and facilitates the optimum environment for the safe display of sensitive artifacts in the Visitor Experience.

Visitors are led through the spaces on a spiralling route which is reflected in the building’s landscaped roof, directing them into the tower, the climax of their journey, to be propelled vertically in scenic lifts that scale two prototype rockets 35 m high. The sculptural form of the tower is a direct expression of the spatial and technical requirements of the structure, which while providing an enclosure for groundbreaking exhibits, is in itself a showcase of innovative technologies. The horizontal 3 m high ribs are formed from inflated ETFE cushions joining a series of radiused circular hollow steel sections that form arcs of varying radii. These in turn are stabilized by an eccentric concrete core which forms a series of viewing galleries and allows the complex three-dimensional envelope to be formed with minimal secondary support structure.

The Rocket Tower has been designed as a showcase for high-profile international exhibits, most notably the “Blue Streak” F16 and Thor Abel rockets. Its volume has been defined by the dimensions of these exhibits, with its highest point (42m) proportionate to that of the largest rocket installed (26m). The design was initially developed using copper wire models to test the available forms, the most suitable of which was then computer modelled, allowing the various potential rockets and exhibits to be placed and tested within the space.

The resulting structure is an exemplar of efficiency, the enclosure of a complex three dimensional space with minimal secondary support mechanisms and troublesome joints and junctions. The steel and ETFE solution greatly increases the efficiency (while reducing the cost) of the overall tower form, as well as enhancing its striking visual impact. The Rocket Tower therefore acts as a green house: self-heating except when outside temperatures drop to an excessively low level. Even then the tower requires only a low level of heating to prevent condensation. At the opposite extreme, it accounts for over-heating on particularly hot days with a natural ventilation system of high and low level louvres. The National Space Centre was opened to the public by Leciestershire-born Dr. Jeff Hoffman, one of NASA’s most experienced astronauts. By the end of October 2001, it had reached its visitor numbers target for the year and was later chosen as the UK information centre for Near Earth Objects (seeing off competition from the Natural History Museum and Spaceguard UK).

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