Urban Nature Project

Year: 2025
Region: London and the South East
Award Category: Building Project of the Year
Organisation / Individual: Walter Lilly, Natural History Museum, Feilden Fowles, J&L Gibbons, Gitta Gschwendtner, engineersHRW, Max Fordham, Mace
National / Regional Winner: Regional Winner
Constructing Excellence

The Urban Nature Project (UNP) transformed the Natural History Museum’s (NHM) South Kensington five-acre gardens into a welcoming, accessible and biologically diverse green space providing a place for visitors, researchers, and scientists to learn about Earth’s changing biological diversity. The project is part of the Museum’s national Urban Nature Movement.

The Museum’s two principal gardens were transformed into two distinct urban environments: The Evolution Garden, telling the story of change on our planet, stretching back 2.7 billions years, brought to life with geology and planting and the installation of Fern, a full-size, bronze Diplodocus supported by Kusuma Trust; and the Nature Discovery Garden, supported by The Cadogan Charity, encouraging visitors to connect, monitor and study nature.

With ambitious and demanding KPIs, creating a highly accessible and sustainable design has been at the heart of this low carbon redevelopment. The project’s sustainable construction methods have been widely recognised, awarded the Silver Prize for Europe at the Holcim Foundation Awards for Sustainable Construction 2023. The project has set a benchmark for MMC and pushed sustainability boundaries. Scoring full marks on all CCS audits, it won Bronze at the 2024 CCS National Awards and is up for another award this year.

With a highly anticipated opening that met the Museum, trustees, funders, press and general public expectations, this project demanded a colossal team effort from all parties to achieve the unmoveable and non-negotiable key dates. Watch project video 

Three Winning Facts:
  1. A unique and fundamental scheme to futureproof urban spaces- The Urban Nature Project is allowing new scientific tools and skills urgently needed to monitor, understand and protect urban nature. This project has pioneered the Natural History Museum’s work across the UK to support urban nature recovery.
  2. Sustainability- The project has pioneered a new benchmark of sustainable modern methods of construction within the industry and has allowed Walter Lilly and subcontractors to learn new best practice principals that can now be applied to our future projects.
  3. Public interest- Named number one of architectural critic, Rowan Moore’s five best projects of 2024 and a ‘cultural triumph’ by The Guardian, the opening of the Urban Nature Project was highly plauded by the public, receiving significant press interest. Patron, The Princess of Wales, shared her support for the project upon opening, saying “I hope these gardens will be inspiring and transformative for the thousands of people who visit.”