SEEDS OF THE FUTURE.

Buried deep in the English countryside, this vast seed bank is intended to conserve the earth's precious resources.

Of all Millennium Commission schemes, the new seed bank at Wakehurst Place in Sussex is the one that best embodies what should be one of the principal aims of the Commission -- to encourage conservation of precious resources and advance knowledge and understanding in the interests of the earth's future. Officially called The Wellcome Trust Millennium Building, [1] the seed bank is part of the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew of which the Wakehurst estate is an offshoot (handed over to the institution in 1965 by the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food which had leased it from the National Trust).

Stanton Williams' quiet, intelligently organized and pleasing building -- really a linked complex of buildings -- provides proper accommodation for and rationalization of the institution's seed conservation section. Due to international collaboration, its collection is immense; and the bank, dedicated to wild plants and rare species, is the largest in the world. It holds nearly all the UK's flora (about three million individual seeds) and by 2010 will hold 10 per cent of the world's dry lands' flora (about 28 000 species) with storage space for a further 40-50 000 species.

Aside from the exterior, and interior remnants, of the sixteenth-century mansion, Wakehurst is known for its gardens, for exotic plants and oak and beech woods. Because the area has more rainfall than Kew and greater variety of habitats, it has been possible to grow plants which do not thrive in Kew's gardens. Lying to the north of the mansion and set among newly planted wild meadows, the seed bank adds to the attractions with a winter garden and parterre open to the public.

Once part of an old deer paddock on the line of a spur ridge in the High Weald, the site is part of an area of outstanding natural beauty and planning constraints were strong. Stanton Williams' inclinations anyway were to create a building in harmony with its surroundings, a 'building that does not shout or wave banners, but sits quietly in the landscape, grounded, held by the line of the horizon'. Their determination to minimize impact on the landscape was helped by topography, for the site drops some 16ft from east to west; and the sandstone layer, which appears as outcrops in parts of the estate, is here submerged 50 or so feet below the surface. The building settles into contours, spreading out horizontally over a vast buried chamber -- the seed bank itself. On the north-west, it drops down a level with a sunken courtyard (to be formally planted with shaved elms); around it are various facilities for visiting scientists, pushed under a terrace on the east and under a research greenhouse on the north.

Materials tie the building into its surroundings. The structure moves out into the landscape in the form of blade walls, arcading and abstract parterres. Sandstone paving covering a forecourt folds up into elevations, locking the building into the ground. A perimeter brick wall, echoing an old estate boundary wall, is threaded horizontally into paving and drawn into parterre structures. Surrounding grassland is drawn into the composition, over the terrace above the academic court and weighted down by three huge stone sculptures, carved spheres of Kilkenny stone by Peter Randall-Page.

On the main ground level, the building is composed of a series of templates. These are vaulted concrete structures, measuring 14.4 x 7.2m, supported by in-situ concrete frames and stiffened by edge beams. (The repeating forms of a sea bean casing were apparently an inspiration.) Aligned roughly east-west and disposed in two groups of six either side of a glazed winter garden, the structures house the main process and research laboratories and public areas. Arching over laboratories, the barrel-vaults provide the thermal mass necessary for natural environmental control and are surmounted by zinc tern-coated canopies which add another layer of protection. Air circulates in a gap between metal and insulated concrete moderating temperature swings.

In form, proportion and lucency, the winter garden is a really pleasing space. Its layered vaulted roof has a glazed north side, to admit the sky, and shading devices on the south side. When seen in winter, the glancing shafts of sunlight on pale York stone and fairfaced concrete contributed to the pleasure and tranquillity of the place. At both ends of the vault, space flows out through transparent walls into undulating landscape. At present the grounds are bald and the visitor must return next summer to get the full effect of wild meadows and flower starred grasses.

But this space has an informative function and by employing interactive techniques, virtual reality technology and simple display, Studio Land Design's exhibition explains the purpose and work of the seed bank. Linear arrangements of reticently designed cases underscore spatial linearity, as do the skylit ambulatories down both sides of the winter garden, from which you can stare through glass at white coated technicians, your scrutiny informed by display cases beneath the windows.

At the west end, screened off by glass balustrading, is a stainless steel pit traversed by a glass bridge which links the two laboratory wings. Spiralling stairs and a glass lift transport technicians to subterranean depths and storage vaults. (Part of the research being carried out is to determine how long and at what temperatures different seeds can be stored. It is thought some 80 per cent could survive for over 200 years.)

The only complaint must be that there should be more of this sort of thing -- in the end, Kew is a government department and, despite the generosity of sponsors, is largely dependent on government monies -- and saving endangered plants, which could avert famine and disease, control pollution and climate, is not necessarily a priority for hard-pressed governments. But it is to be hoped that this, the largest international conservation project ever undertaken, will be enlarged further, and, furthermore, copied elsewhere in the world - that this will not be a Noah's Ark.

(1.) The building was sponsored by the Millennium Commission, by Orange plc, and by the Wellcome Trust. Recognizing the enormous contribution that plants make to remedies, the Trust provided [pound]9.2m towards the building, hence the name; the winter garden for visitors, named the Orange Room, marks the contribution made by Orange plc.