As with the urbanization of thousands of years before, the Industrial Revolution changed the way people thought about themselves in relation to nature.
The industrial societies used machines that were able to make use of energy to do work. The fact that burning coal could replace the need for human labour deeply altered human and environmental history. This was a time when the separation of man from nature accelerated, thus the train station, the cathedral and symbol of the industrial revolution, and derived house of separation, could be said to be indebted to nature.
The project site lies on the merging point of the natural - River Avon - and the mechanical - Great Western Railway - a site now used for reconciliation in which the archetypal house of progress welcomes the house of conservation and nature.
