So, they are magnolia.Seven bedrooms upstairs have been turned into exhibition rooms to tell the story of a conventional Victorian who shocked the world. They show that his scientific knowledge got off to a slow start: the dunce at school, fossil collecting at Cambridge, years on the Beagle meticulously collecting flora and fauna from forays into South America. The Natural History museum has lent some stuffed animals, including a puffer fish, pangolins, a giant white fulmar spreading its wings, and a Galapagos turtle No apes. In a clamorous room tapes of actors playing indignant bishops and politicians reviling On the Origin of Species takes us up to date with genetics, and the cloning of Dolly the sheep.If visiting scientists complain that there isn't enough to inform the Cambridge undergrad here, Mr Bryant will tell them he didn't do up the house for them Rather, it is to be a popular learning centre for the young.
Nor did he reconstruct it for the style police, who want to know why there aren't piles of papers next to an unplumped chair. He dismisses this as "the chimpanzee approach to conservation", from which I presume he despises artificiality and, in particular, unnatural selection. Darwin would approve.Down House, Luxted Road, Downe, near Bromley, Kent. Entry by timed ticket only, pre-booked one day in advance, call 0870 6030145.
TONIGHT, the Prime Minister opens Powerhouse::uk, an exhibition of British design products inside four, silver, inflatable pods on Horseguards Parade. Yet, the Lotus chosen by the Design Council as a Millennium Product will not be pulling up smoothly outside. Although Tony Blair will be announcing 202 of the Millennium choices at tonight's bash, only four of them have been included in the Powerhouse. The rest would have been Cinderellas anyway, because you'd need a fork- lift truck to get them to the party In fact, one of them is a fork-lift truck.
The Design Council's Millennium Products list includes aircraft ejection seats and bolt-down public benches, or the six-lane covered railway and emergency bridge joining Hong Kong to its new airport, and the Eurostar train. They represent ingenuity - and heavy industry. Sexy they are not. But that's a description Powerhouse can claim - the gizmos and gadgets drummed up by architects Doug Branson and Nigel Coates with curator Claire Catterell make an entertaining show of products and digital information. The pounds 10m exhibition has been organised by the Department of Trade and Industry to boost exports as well as entertain foreign dignitaries at this week's Asian and European heads of state summit.The Powerhouse includes a Scalectrix track, whizzing with miniature buses and taxis set against a cityscape made of packaging, to show off the best of graphics in the Communications pod. Suitcases whirl on a carousel packed with fashion and chairs, calculators and computers in the Lifestyle drum. Over at Networking, attitude, especially in the workplace, gets an overhaul to show our competitors how we grew multi-national.