We wanted to share our small obsession about London’s Wellcome Collection including its library with comfy sofas and cushions as well as tall windows with lots of light and space and its “Bookshelf of the Human Genome”.
Really, it is one of the coolest places in London.
It is a “library” with cushions scattered over a neoclassical staircase, art books all over, tall windows overlooking the boulevard outside, and rather smart-looking desks where you can work (or at least pretend to while spending time with your smart phone …).
But one of the most fascinating bits is on a lower level, its bookshelf of DNA code with 23 “volumes” each dedicated to one of the 23 chromosomes that we all have, Book 1 on Chromosome 1 and Book 2 on Chromosome 2 and so on. Of course, many pages are “blank”, so to speak, or in other words, filled with “gibberish” (“junk DNA” – that admittedly is revised by some more recent research into the “not-so-junk” category). All in, there are 3 billion letters in these volumes!
The area around Euston Road and the St Pancras-Kings Cross train station complex has become a bit of a genomics hub with Wellcome Collection and the more recent (2016) opening of the Crick Institute (the building behind St Pancras station), a research partnership between Cancer Research UK, Imperial College London, King’s College London, the Medical Research Council, University College London and the Wellcome Trust.
For a good cup of coffee and a walk, go and soak up some vibes and ingest some caffeine at the nearby latest urban re-invention that is called Coal Drops Yard, 10 minutes away, or if you are lazy, cross Euston Road and walk several hundred metres over to The Last Word Café in the front courtyard of the British Library that overlooks the beautiful sculpture called “Newton”.
We hope your thoughts will be inspired and upgraded by all these!
