img(height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=2939831959404383&ev=PageView&noscript=1")

Stonehenge Visitor Centre, Wiltshire

RIBA Regional Awards 2014: South West / Wessex

Stonehenge Visitor Centre, Wiltshire
Stonehenge Visitor Centre, Wiltshire Credit: Peter Cook

Stonehenge Visitor Centre, Wiltshire
Denton Corker Marshall LLP for English Heritage
Contract £6.9m. GIA 1,590m2

Denton Corker Marshall’s Stonehenge visitor centre is finally leaving its understated mark on the Wiltshire countryside. In a sense, its positioning was of more import than the building itself, particularly obscuring the parking from the World Heritage Site. The project is formed of two boxes nestled beneath a huge, slightly curved canopy roof with fritted edges, supported on a forest of thin steel columns. 

The two boxes deal with the visitor needs of the centre – one clad in sweet chestnut contains the exhibition and toilets; the other is glazed and holds a café and shop.  Dealing solely with user needs, there is a clarity to these spaces, as all other administrative functions are sited in a dedicated building by the coach park. Such bigger picture thinking drove the design, helping maintain the Stones’ eerie yet fragile sense of isolation.


 

Latest articles

RIBAJ Spec: Architecture for Housing and Residential Development Webinar

  1. Spec

RIBAJ Spec: Architecture for Housing and Residential Development Webinar

One hundred years on, an exhibition that presented Art Deco as the language of modernity

  1. Culture

The 1925 Paris Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes would have enormous influence