School trip to The Crystal
Welcome to the Crystal, a sustainable cities initiative by Siemens. The Crystal in London is home to the world’s largest exhibition on the future of cities, as well as one of the world’s most sustainable buildings and events venues.
The Crystal is home to the world’s largest exhibition on the future of cities, the world’s most sustainable events venue, and office space for global engineering powerhouse Siemens.
Siemens opened the Crystal in 2012 as a global hub for debate on sustainable living and development. Since opening, over 100,000 people each year have visited the interactive exhibition.
Designed by award winning architects Wilkinson Eyre, this iconic sustainable building draws inspiration from the many sides of a crystal. The external shape of the building creates unique internal spaces, including an auditorium, conference facilities, meeting rooms and office spaces.
With its waterside location on London’s Royal Docks, the Crystal architecture provides a striking contrast to the surrounding skyline, the O₂, Canary Wharf and the Emirates Airline Cable Car that passes by.
The Crystal is an all-electric building that uses solar power and a ground source heat pump to generate its own energy. It showcases state-of-the-art technologies to make buildings more efficient and also profiles Siemens’ Environmental Portfolio. The building incorporates rainwater harvesting, black water treatment, solar heating and automated building management systems.
School trips
For London school trips the Crystal exhibition is a rich resource of educational content dedicated to urban planning and sustainability.
Planning a curriculum linked trip for Science, Geography, Design and Technology or Citizenship?
Contact education@thecrystal.org to hear about their guided tours and workshops.
Planning your school trip or student travel to London? The Crystal exhibition uses a unique, interactive approach that encourages students to challenge and change the way they think about our cities, now and for future generations. Educational visits can be personalised to meet specific areas of urban planning, so that students can explore how they can make a real and personal contribution to sustainable urban living.
Educational resources are available for students and they have created information and activity sheets which can be used before a visit, materials to use as they explore the exhibition, and project sheets to continue learning in the classroom.
For teachers, they have provided an introduction and description of the exhibits and curriculum links for each of the zones. They have created Teacher’s Notes and extension ideas to support delivery of activities.
The Crystal is a low risk environment. However, teachers or group leaders will need to undertake a risk assessment specifically for their group in line with school and LEA policies and DfES guidelines.