Solar Canopy, The Earth Centre, Doncaster

At the time of construction the solar canopy was the largest solar collector in the UK

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Project background

The Solar Canopy is located in the Earth Centre, a large-scale visitor attraction on a 300-acre site in one of the most environmentally devastated areas in the country: the coalfields of South Yorkshire. Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects master planned the scheme and designed the entrance building, the Planet Earth Gallery and the Solar Canopy.

The Solar Canopy is a 925sqm photovoltaic solar collector, currently the largest solar collector in the UK. The structure is a geometrically complex space frame constructed of larch poles joined by steel nodes, of which no two nodes are identical. The whole structure seems to be supported almost implausibly on four delicate feet, described variously as an ‘abstracted tree’, or a ‘prehistoric dinosaur bird temporarily resting from its Jurassic flight’

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Feilden Clegg Bradley Architects

The solar canopy in all its gloryThe intricacy of the structure at close quarters Solar canopy lifting Lifting large sections into place after thier erection on the ground

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