Winter Garden, Sheffield
I visited Sheffield for a university offer day. I explored the city a bit before my train home, coming across this building, the ‘Winter Garden’.
rendered sketch 
original labelled sketch
The idea of the building is to act as a temperate greenhouse, where elements of the environment such as moisture and temperature can be carefully monitored, allowing 2,000 plant species to thrive. It is the largest of its urban kind in Europe.
The shape of the building is interesting because the glass ceiling uses a suspension system. Three ‘shells’ in the shape of quadratic curves sit inside each other, and are anchored to the ground at either end. This allows for a very lightweight structure. In fact, the building uses very little concrete and is instead mainly formed of timber arches, a steel frame and glass panelling.