Centre for Alternative Technology — Local services in Glantwymyn

The Centre for Alternative Technology in Pantperthog, Machynlleth is a place that claims to be a “world leader in sustainable living” and a “pioneer of green technology”. It is also a place that will leave you utterly baffled, bored, and bewildered. The Centre for Alternative Technology is a confusing mix of outdated exhibits, random greenhouses, and hippie nonsense. It is like a mad max film set in Wales, but without the fun or the action.

The Centre for Alternative Technology is built on a former slate quarry, which explains the steep and uneven terrain. You have to walk up and down hills to see the various displays of renewable energy, organic farming, and eco-friendly living. You can see solar panels, wind turbines, compost toilets, and more. You can also see a lot of greenhouses that seem to have no purpose or order. They are scattered around the site, growing different plants and crops. Some of them are even empty or abandoned. You might wonder why they need so many greenhouses, or what they are doing with them. You might also wonder why they charge you £9.50 per adult to enter this place.

The Centre for Alternative Technology is also full of outdated and irrelevant information. You can read signs and boards that tell you how to save energy, reduce waste, and protect the environment. You can also listen to lectures and workshops that teach you how to be more sustainable and responsible. However, most of the information is either too technical or too obvious. You might learn something new, or you might learn something you already knew. You might also learn something that makes no sense at all.

One of the most baffling things about the Centre for Alternative Technology is the cave. Yes, there is a cave in this place. It is called the “Eco-cave”, and it is supposed to show you how humans have impacted the earth over time. However, it is more like a horror show than an educational exhibit. You have to walk through a dark and damp tunnel, where you can see creepy models of animals and scrubbing brushes stuck to the cave wall, thats right, scrubbing brushes. You might feel scared, disgusted, or guilty. You might also feel confused and annoyed.

The Centre for Alternative Technology is not a place that will make you happy or inspired. It is a place that will make you question your sanity and your choices. It is a place that tries to be alternative, but ends up being sarcastic and comical instead. It is a mediocre place that deserves a...

I just came back from the CAT today. I visited with my MSc programme, from UCL (MSc EDE). The people were really kind and welcoming, helpful with anything we needed and had everything prepared for our group, with no problems coming up. The food was quite decent I believe, always more than enought to eat, fresh and very filling, following vegetarian diet. My room in the WISE building was very nice and quite warm, although some other students claimed that their rooms were freezing cold, maybe mecause they were facing south or east. Mine was facing west and was quite warm, so no problems. The WISE building is only 3 years old, very interesting structure, built with wood, rammed earth and hemp-crete walls. The interior wood was not painted, which aesthetically was excellent, but it smelled quite a lot, probably because of insufficient ventilation. A very negative thing that I have to mention is their toilets. I don't know why, but the smell was horrible in the common toilets, it was so strong that it was "stuck" on my nose for hours..and I have a very poor sense of smell. They looked like nobody ever sanitized them. What was really interesting is the variety of the buildings' structures, as they included strawbale, rammed earth, cob, wood, hemp-crete, etc. Too bad our schedule was too tight so we didn't have a detailed touring around the complex, but I'm pretty sure it would be very enlightening and interesting. There were several hand-made structures scattered around the complex, related to wood craft, renewable energy, advanced technology and up-cycling, etc. I totally recommend it because it something that you don't really meet every day. I definitely want to go back and explore more things about it and maybe attend...

My wife volunteered here in the 70s and I visited with her in the 80s. At that time it was a counter cultural, cutting edge institution, and the enemy was nuclear power and the wastefulness of the economic system, focussing on building and energy in particular. We visited in excited anticipation of how it had changed now that greens have power in some major cities and many laws have been passed encouraging better energy use and building techniques.

We were totally let down. It honestly looks more like a soviet theme park than anything else. ALL the educational stuff is broke, exhibit signs have been allowed to crumble into total illegible dust. The wind mill is rusted. All the push this, pull this stuff was broke long ago. Wood needs painting and is crumbling in places, including the parapet over the cliff railway (worryingly!).

If someone visited here as a person who didn’t know about alternative technology they would walk away thinking that change would require going back 50 years. There is nothing here to capture the imagination of the causal non informed visitor (as there was in the 70s).

The biggest problem is related to this neglect; there is not one mention of the climate emergency in the whole place. This is a shocking oversight.

The place may be focussing on higher education now, which is great, but this should be made more explicit. But to keep charging £8.50 to visitors to go and see a ‘seaside town they forgot to shut down’ is, well, at best short sighted and at worst counterproductive. I felt like I was visiting a piece of history showing what green thinking was like two...