A landmark is only as good as the way you arrive.
Eden Project North is a proposed attraction on Morecambe seafront. The brief was to visualise the data around it. The conclusion I reached was that its biggest risk is not the building, it is a town and a rail network that cannot absorb the visitors it will bring. So the project became four interventions: one regional, one local, two urban, plus the app that ties them together.
Find out whether the North West can carry it.
Before proposing anything, the question worth answering was whether an Eden Project can succeed this far north at all. So I mapped every major North West attraction by location and visitor volume, and tracked a decade of visitor numbers against the original Eden Project in Cornwall.
- North West attractions track similar visitor trends to the Eden Project, the location is not the constraint
- Nearly all the successful ones share an educational element, which should therefore be a cornerstone
- Chester Zoo's recent surge suggests putting visitors in touch with nature is the strongest single draw
- Blackpool Pleasure Beach, the Lake District and the Trafford Centre dwarf Eden's numbers
- So the play is not to compete with them, it is to connect to them
- Linking EPN into the regional network is what sustains visitor numbers long term
One regional. One local. Both made of glass.
If the strategy is to connect EPN to the rest of the North West, the journey has to stop being something visitors endure. The regional answer is a coastal line that treats the view as the product. The local answer is a park-and-ride tram that keeps Morecambe's streets for Morecambe.
The current North West train network is outdated, slow and unattractive. By implementing a new rail line along the coastline, I hope to utilise the views and link it to other attractions in a way which would enhance the experience of travelling to EPN.
The local move is the one I still think is right. Put the station outside the town where there is land for parking, then run a tram in along the A5105. Smaller roads stay clear for residents, and because visitors arrive on foot rather than in a car they are far more likely to actually spend money in Morecambe, which is the entire point of siting the thing there.
The seafront opposite has to change too.
A world-class attraction facing a row of tired frontages is a problem the attraction cannot solve on its own. Both proposals target the land directly opposite the EPN site: one high-end hotel to prove the town can carry investment, and a rooftop food court run by local independents rather than chains.
The site it replaces is an amusement arcade. The argument is not that arcades are beneath the town, it is that a single building occupying the best view in Morecambe should be earning more for the place than that one does.
The cheapest intervention, and the one that learns.
Everything above needs capital and a decade. The app needs neither, and it is the only proposal that sends information back. Navigation and live transport times first, because that is what a first-time visitor actually needs, then tickets and queue management, then promotion of local independents.
The most important reason to develop an app for the Eden Project is to track visitors and gain feedback for improvement.
That line is the one that connects this project to everything I have done since. Buildings are a bet you place once. An app is a loop, it tells you where people actually go, what they skip, and where the plan was wrong, which means every other intervention can be corrected rather than just committed to.
Two of these would not survive contact with a budget.
The report was graded full marks, and I still think two of the four proposals are wrong. Both are wrong in the same direction: I designed the ideal intervention rather than the affordable one.
“Reflecting on my hotel visualisation, I believe it is extremely unlikely that a company with the prestige of W would place one of their hotels in the North West. Therefore, a more realistic venture should be considered.”
“Moreover, I think that the movement of the train station and new tram line may be too costly for the reward. However, I do think it would be successful in reducing congestion and Morecambe should consider creating some kind of park and ride system.”
I have kept those paragraphs because they are the most useful thing in the report. The instinct to cost-check my own proposal, and to say so in the document being marked, is the same instinct that later made me kill a blockchain-led framing and publish the correction. The design work here is student work. The habit is not.