The Great Glass House - National Botanical Gardens of Wales. - Odd-Shaped Buildings on Waymarking.com

The National Botanic Garden of Wales, Created within a beautiful Regency 200 year old park, is a landmark visitor destination with historical features and spectacular modern architecture, it features a stunning, massive glasshouse, designed by the World famous, Norman Foster and Partners. Located in Carmarthenshire, South Wales.

To give you some idea of the awesome scale & size of the 'Great Glass House' Each of the 784 panes of glass weigh about 1 Ton (2,240 pounds) & each sheet of glass is approximately 20 feet long.
Interesting Fact; Each pane of glass is unique, & slightly curved to fit the space it is in. It is said without modern computers it would have been impossible to build.

From space it looks like a giant oval gemstone.
A great Ariel view can be found on the Virtual Globetrotter Website; (visit link)

"The Great Glasshouse is the largest single-span glasshouse in the world. It reinvents the glasshouse for the twenty-first century, offering a model of sustainable development. Elliptical in plan, the building swells from the ground like a glassy hillock, echoing the undulations of the surrounding landscape." Text Source; (visit link)

"The plants in this glasshouse come from six areas of the world: California, Australia, the Canary Islands, Chile, South Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Great Glasshouse is zoned to reflect these geographical areas that have regions that enjoy a Mediterranean climate. Hot dry summers, cool moist winters, dazzling sunlight, strong breezes and the occasional ground-clearing fire create perfect conditions for many plants to thrive on the scrubby, rock-strewn landscapes. In fact, it’s so perfect that most of these plants grow nowhere else on Earth. Although these regions cover less than 2% of the Earth’s surface, they contain more than 20% of all known flowering plant species, and their richness and plant diversity are considered second only in importance to tropical habitats. Largely due to human activity, these precious habitats are now as threatened as the rainforests, and our Great Glasshouse is dedicated to conserving their endangered plants." Source's:- (visit link) & (visit link)

Building Address: National Botanic Garden of Wales Middleton Hall Llanarthne, Carmarthenshire Wales SA32 8HN Is it open to the general public?: yes When was it built? (Approximate if you must.): 05/14/2000 What is the name of this building?: The Great Glass House

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Date Logged Log User Rating   05/21/2016 McGreifer visited it 01/26/2016 veritas vita visited it

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