Buildings: Bicentennial Conservatory

The Bicentennial Conservatory in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens was built to commemorate the bicentenary of European colonisation of Australia in 1988. It is the largest single span conservatory in the Southern Hemisphere. The Conservatory is curvilinear in shape and 100 metres long, 47 metres wide and 27 metres high. It is made of steel and 2434 square metres of glass. The Conservatory contains lowland tropical rainforest plants from Australia, Papua New Guinea, nearby Pacific islands and Indonesia. To foster these plants, some of which are endangered in their native habitat, relative humidity is kept at between 70 and 80 per cent and temperature kept at 15 C at night and between 23 C and 33 C during the day.