Located 1.5 miles to the west of
the stone circle at Airman’s Corner, just within the World Heritage Site but
out of sight of the monument, the new visitor centre is designed with a light
touch on the landscape – a low key building sensitive to its environment.
Sited within the rolling
landforms of Salisbury Plain, the design consists of a subtle group of simple
enclosures resting on a limestone platform, all sheltered by a fine,
perforated, undulating canopy. Three pods, finished in different materials,
provide the principal accommodation. The largest, clad in sweet chestnut
timber, houses the museum displays and service facilities. The second largest,
clad in glass, houses the educational base, a stylish café and retail
facilities.
Located between these is the
third, by far the smallest and clad in zinc, which provides ticketing and guide
facilities. Oversailing them all, and resting on 211 irregularly placed sloping
columns, is a steel canopy clad on the underside with zinc metal panels and
shaped with a complex geometry reflecting the local landforms. Local,
recyclable and renewable materials have been used wherever possible.
The material palette includes
locally grown sweet chestnut timber cladding and Salisbury limestone. The new
building allows Stonehenge to have dedicated facilities on site for education
and interpretation for the first time, with museum-quality exhibits that tell
the story of the 5,000 year- old monument. From the new centre, visitors can
either walk to the monument or take a ten-minute shuttle ride. During the trip
the henge emerges slowly over the horizon to the East.
Sustainable Design
The building is sensitively
designed to sit lightly in the landscape. Reversibility – the ability to return
the site to its current state – was a fundamental design concept. The modern
construction, using slender steel columns and lightweight framed walls, and
semi-external spaces allow the depth of foundations to be minimised.
Other green features include:
- An open loop ground source
heating system that pumps underground water through a unit to extract/inject
heat energy. This enables the building to be heated and provides some cooling
without the need for fossil fuels.
- Fully insulated cavity walls –
the timber pod is constructed of structurally insulated panels (SIPS), which
enables efficiencies in construction whilst minimising material waste and
ensuring the building is well insulated.
- Mixed mode ventilation – the
building will be naturally ventilated whenever external conditions allow,
switching to an efficient mechanical ventilation system that enables the heat
energy in the exhaust air to be ‘recovered’ and transferred to the supply air,
thereby reducing the load on the heating plant and saving energy.
- “Grey water”, including
rainwater collected from the roof of the building, will be used for the bulk of
water required at the visitor centre, e.g. for flushing toilets. Other water –
e.g. for drinking – will be drawn from the aquifer, a local and renewable
resource.
- The facilities will use on-site
water treatment for sustainability and to avoid intrusive trenching for
connections to water and sewer mains.
Location: Stonehenge, UK
Architects: Denton Corker Marshall
Project Associate: Angela Dapper
Structural Engineers: Sinclair Knight Merz
M&E Consultant: Norman Disney Young
Quantity Surveyor: Firmingers
Planning Supervisor: Chris Blandford Associates
Landscape Architects: Chris Blandford Associates
Exhibition Designers: Haley Sharpe Design
Project Managers: Gardiner + Theobald
Steelwork contractor: S H Structures
Main contractor: Vinci Construction
Cost: £ 27M
Year: 2013
Client: English Heritage
Photographs: Peter Cook
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