Cornwall Energy Recovery Centre (CERC): Cornwall Council and Cornwall Energy Recovery Ltd Branding
Interpretive displays focus on creating spaces for informal learning-based activities. In designing the visitors centre for the CERC, an important consideration was creating strong branding for Cornwall Council and Cornwall Energy Recovery Limited, giving ‘ownership’ and reflecting the strong partnership between the two organisations.
The reception area features a sculptural centre-piece representing the main plant building and shows the partnering organisations, with the design heavily influenced by the Cornwall Council logo.
CERC Display: Overview
The project involved the delivery of a visitors centre to tell the story of energy recovery and its position within the overall waste stream, together with other initiatives such as recycling. This included research, content generation, design, illustration, development of many highly interactive activities, and overseeing construction and installation.
CERC Display
To emphasise the energy generation aspect of the Cornwall Energy Recover Centre, the main reception area display features a representation of the main plant building and establishes the various organisations involved with the building, funding and operation of the plant.
CERC Display: Colour and Light
Colour and light are combined into a graphic representation of the Duchy of Cornwall’s arms, featuring 15 Cornish golden bezants on a black shield. These have been formed into an extruded three-dimensional form, with illuminated polished acrylic rods representing power generation.
CERC Display: Interactivity
Many of the installations are highly interactive. The ‘Save It’ display encourages visitors to see how they can reduce domestic power usage by thinking about the devices they are likely to use at home. A giant button is used to start the sequence, providing a fun and engaging experience for the user.
CERC Display: Question Game
To enable large groups to be accommodated, a requirement of the visitor experience is the ability to split large parties into smaller, more manageable groups. In a separate room an interactive game of questions has been devised to provide a fun but highly educational experience.
CERC Display: Kaleidoscope
Interactives have been developed for almost every aspect of the centre to appeal to a broad range of learning styles. A giant Kaleidoscope provides a fun way to view the particles of coloured plastic used in the production of new products from recycled plastics.
CERC Display: Rotating and Illuminated Display Cubes
The 4 Rs provides environmentally friendly approach to minimising waste, taking steps to sequentially Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover. Visitors to the centre are introduced to this concept by the ‘Power of Four’ display. A series of rotating, illuminated cubes each draws the visitors’ attention, and the size of the cubes has been designed to allow easy viewing by both children and adults.
CERC Display: Guess How Many
An interactive demonstration of the amount of power generated at the CERC as a result of the Energy from Waste process. Visitors are encouraged to guess how many of various items can be powered by the energy generated at the CERC. After making a few guesses, a button can be pressed to reveal the answer.
CERC Display: My Pledge to Cornwall
At the end of the visit, the younger visitors such as school groups are invited to make a their own pledge to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover. Using the Pledge Stations, they can input a message and when complete, they can hit the coloured button and send their message via a series of pulsed lights to the ceiling mounted LED display for all to see.
CERC Display: Learning Activities
A hands-on game which is both educational and engaging and has been designed to appeal to wide range of visitors and age groups. The idea is to build-up the four key words Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover by answering a series of multiple-choice questions. The games allow the activity to be conducted using questions from three different levels of difficulty, and this involved concept design, question generation, all graphic design, illustration and bespoke programming.
CERC Display: Electromagnet Interactive Game
Designed to demonstrate how the two main different types of metal, ferrous and non-ferrous are separated in the waste stream. Steel cans are represented by miniature baked bean cans, and aluminium cans by miniature cola cans. The operator lowers the electromagnet grabber, and this attracts the steel cans separating them from the aluminium cans.
CERC Display: Barcode Game
An interactive and fun way to encourage visitors to make ecologically sound decisions when purchasing groceries. Colourful representations of typical items of food are displayed on a shelf, from where the participants take one and place into the bar-code scanner. The scanner unit has a screen, and this displays information on whether a good or bad choice has been made, the item’s impact on the waste stream.
CERC Display: Vinyl Wall Graphics
Impactful printed wall graphics enhance the space and provide an ideal platform for presenting information which can be easily updated as changes to Cornwall’s waste stream occur.
CERC Display: Water Clock and Signpost System
Reusing plastic bottles in ‘bottle wall’ signposting units has been successfully employed. The signpost units denote the start and finish of the individual sections of the visitor route, and draw attention to the potential of reusing items, preventing them from entering the waste stream. The water clock display shows the connection between water and energy.
CERC Display: Communicating with Colour and Shapes
Colour has been used throughout the visitors centre to attract attention, group related elements and convey meaning and context. This is further enhanced by combining this with interesting shapes and angles. Great ingenuity was called-for in the design of some of the displays to achieve an interesting range of shapes and colour to enhance the learning process.
CERC Display: Illustrating the Story
Illustration plays a key role throughout the visitors centre in helping to deliver the message in an effective way. In the barcode game, the items of shopping are represented using colourful illustrated cut-out shapes.
CERC Display: Interactivity
Interactivity plays a key part in delivering the message, creating an exciting and engaging environment, particularly for children in school groups. All of the interactives were conceived by us in-house and they ensure the visitors enjoy a fun and memorable visit.