One of the UK’s most popular eco tourist destinations is planning to build a hotel on site – a construction that will use only local materials including hemp, with swimming pools warmed using underground hot rocks.

The original plans for a 109-bedroom hotel at the Eden Project in Cornwall were put on hold in January 2020, the plan then to open up to guests the following year. But co-founder Sir Tim Smit has revealed the proposals will be revisited, telling a conference it will provide “accommodation for the greatest hot water pools in mainland Europe”.

As part of the proposals, work is being undertaken with Wasp, an Italian firm that uses clay and soil to construct buildings using 3D printing. 

The Eden Project is a world-renowned experimental garden most famous for its biomes, considered to be the world’s largest greenhouses, nestling in a 50-metre-deep crater – one simulating a rainforest and the other a Mediterranean environment.   

A spokesperson for the Eden Project told CornwallLive: “The Eden Project Hotel will be an exemplar of regenerative tourism and positive social impact, with the aim of making it climate positive – beyond net zero. To achieve this, the design is being informed by emerging construction technologies that can reduce the overall carbon life cycle of the building and operations.”