The Dome: Body Zone

Voyage into the human machine and learn how to get the best from it

Copyright NMEC/Hayes Davidson

The human body is the most fascinating and complex object in the world. There has been no significant evolutionary transition in its shape, structure, composition or nature since Homo Erectus became Homo Sapiens between 100,000 and 150,000 years ago.

Or at least not until recently. Over the last hundred years, new understanding of diet, exercise, and science has helped transform our bodies and our lives. Today we run and jump higher, faster and longer. We are stronger, brighter, live longer, and grow taller. We are also balder and more prone to cancer and allergic conditions, but have wiped out five endemic viruses in the last five years alone. We are a species that can instrumentally affect our own future and the world around us.

The Body Zone is designed to amaze, with the world’s biggest physical representation of the human form, a rich and intellectually accessible exploration. Visitors are taken into the world of human biology and medical science. They explore the dramatic impact of lifestyle choices on the way our bodies appear and perform, not just illness but athletic prowess, reproduction, cosmetic alterations to the body and the future of fitness.

This will consist of a sitting human figure taller than the Statue of Liberty.

Visitors will enter on a walkway through the back into "an empty, cathedral-like space" through which they will travel upwards in a lift to a 360-degree observation platform in the head.

From here, they will be able to look out over the whole area of the Dome.

Descending, visitors will enter the outstretched right leg on a travelator, or moving pavement, being conveyed through an exhibition the organisers describe as being interactive about the human body.

• Sponsored by Boots The Chemists with L’Oreal and Roche
• Designer HP:ICM Ltd