BOOKS & ARTS NATURE|Vol 447|28 June 2007 NATL MARITIME MUS., LONDON NATL D. GILBERT, ©NATL MARITIME MUS., LONDON ©NATL GILBERT, D.

Unusual design: new planetarium embodies geometry and astronomy. The clever cone A new planetarium for the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

Martin Kemp Morrison as part of the £15-million provided human designers with their basic Traditionally planetariums have been (US$30-million) redevelopment of vocabulary of form. housed in domed structures, echoing the the historic complex of former Royal Conic sections and newly defined ‘vault of the heavens’. As we approach Observatory buildings. curves lay at the heart of Wren’s work in the new Peter Harrison Planetarium at The site is literally central to the history architecture no less than in his science. Greenwich, London, across the terrace of the measurement of the world and of the He stressed that “the geometrical is the overlooking the Thames, high above Inigo cosmos, in keeping with the idea of “man most essential part of architecture”. By Jones’s Queen’s House and Christopher as the measure of all things” (to quote the “geometrical” he meant not so much Wren’s Greenwich Hospital, our ancient tag credited to Protagoras). It was the abstract basis of beauty but the expectations are confounded. A strange here in 1675, by the decree of Charles II, that embeddedness of geometry in engineered mottled bronze cone emerges from the Christopher Wren built the observatory for structures, natural and artificial. paving, like the protruding tail of an alien John Flamsteed, with the express purpose of As an astronomer, student of dynamics space craft that has crash-landed, deeply finding an exact way to determine longitude. and statics, meteorologist and inventor embedding itself in the ground. The quest, as we know, was to be prolonged, of scientific devices, Wren’s practical As we walk around the cone, its form and only in 1773 was John Harrison’s H4 extraction of natural design was perpetually progressively declares itself. One side is timekeeper recognized as providing the at the heart of his endeavour. This vertical, whereas the opposite contour means to solve the problem. understanding was expressed above in his emerges at an angle from the ground. The The worldwide adoption of Greenwich domes, including the twin structures of cone has been sliced to produce an elliptical Mean Time as the international point of Greenwich Hospital and, of course, that of face, mirrored to reflect the passing sky. reference was enshrined in 1884 with the St Paul’s Cathedral. It transpires that the inscribed angle of the recognition at the Washington gathering Wren and his contemporaries would inclined face is 51.5°, corresponding to the of 25 nations that the Greenwich meridian have been surprised by the actual form and latitude of Greenwich. The conic section should henceforth be regarded as materials of the new planetarium, which is made at 90° to this face, which means longitude 0o. inevitably lie outside their architectural that the mirrored plane is parallel to the Looking at the Peter Harrison Planetarium vocabulary of the seventeenth century, but Equator. The vertical edge designates the in its historic setting, resonances abound. they would have felt completely at home zenith, while an inscribed line running up the Not least, it is elegantly in keeping with the with the geometry and astronomy that it sloping contour acts as a sighting line for modes of thought that animated Wren, embodies. The new planetarium is a fitting the North Star. Robert Hooke and other luminaries of addition to a site that demands architecture This is an unquestionably clever building, the early Royal Society. The immanent of a high order. which acts as visual and pedagogic geometry of nature, whether the mighty Martin Kemp is professor of the history of art compliment to the inscribed sphere of the ellipses of the planets or the miniature at the University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 1PT, 120-seat internal viewing chamber. It has ‘engines’ revealed by the microscope, was UK. His new book, Seen | Unseen, is published been designed by architects Allies and not only the fit subject of science but also by Oxford University Press. SCIENCE IN CULTURE

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