Climatron, Blackpool
1961

The Climatron was Terry Farrell's final year project at the School of Architecture in Newcastle. Influenced by the teachings of Buckminster Fuller, the scheme was a high-tech holiday island connected to the base of Blackpool Tower.

The Climatron was envisaged as a piece of town planning rather than a stand-alone piece of architecture. It had a new public square and was a restoration project in the sense that it revealed and focused in on the tower, providing dramatic new views of the historic structure from the sea. The link between the new dome and the existing tower was the start of a preoccupation that runs through all Terry Farrell's work, as was the railway that linked the dome to the shore – people movement has always been a key concern. Although the Climatron retained the flavour of high-tech on the outside, the internal spaces were compartmentalized into complex, almost Soanian areas, in contrast to the over-simplistic, all-purpose high-tech interiors that are, in Charles Jencks's words, 'entropic space'. The activity took place under one roof and consisted of beaches and lakes around the edge of the dome and an enormous multi-purpose dance hall/performance space in the centre. The outside of the Climatron enabled walks up and down its face, so visitors could use it like a man-mountain.

Inspired by the beauty of natural shapes, the Climatron's form grew out of the sinuous shoots, leaves and petals that Terry Farrell had explored in his earlier landscape drawings and his reading of D'Arcy Thompson's On Growth and Form. Set out at sea and containing an aquarium, the structure's link with nature was further explored by its use of high-tech engineering that referenced the work of Buckminster Fuller. Unusually for most students, the project featured a business plan, reflecting Terry Farrell's preparation for his life as a practitioner and prefiguring a statement he made in The Times in November 1971:

‘ Architects are notoriously product orientated … they tend to be far too concerned with buildings as complete, finished entities rather than with the process that goes into designing them … we believe in providing a full consultancy service for our clients which covers everything from tackling legal problems to demonstrating site potential – in fact a considerable part of our activities are not directed towards building buildings but towards providing services.'