First time I saw photos of the Gherkin I thought it looked terrible. Saw it from the train a couple of times and still wasn’t impressed. Wasn’t until I saw it up close at the back of Liverpool Street Station that I thought WOW that really is something! It’s grown on me ever since :-)
The Stonehenge Visitor Centre was always going to be a hard one – both from a design point of view but also to provide for the functions it has to deliver (museum, shop, cafeteria, parking, etc etc). Here’s what the Telegraph article has to say -
The finished centre is a considered and respectful design, but also distinctly modern in approach, which may not please everyone. While the stones are all about mass and weight, the new building is purposefully light, low slung and partially transparent, allowing the eye to pass through and connect with the landscape beyond. It is a subtle presence in the landscape, with a sweeping roof supported by a small forest of slim supporting columns. The canopy shelters a cafe and shop to one side, within a more transparent section, while a museum sits at the other side protected by a facade of weathered chestnut. Between the two there is a sheltered courtyard and a ticket pod.
'Quite early on we came up with this idea of an undulating roof with eccentric, irregular columns, which would fit well in this rolling countryside,’ continues Quinlan... 'It is quite a big building, with a million visitors going through it every year, so if you had a pitched roof it would become massive, like a cathedral, which didn’t fit in with our approach. We wanted the building to sit lightly in the landscape.’ Quinlan compares the supporting columns to reeds, or slim tree trunks, with a feeling of lightness. It looks as if they are supporting the roof, although they are actually holding it down, as the wind could catch the canopy and turn it into a giant sail without all of these vertical anchors.
For Quinlan the building will be a success only if it is seen as quiet and discreet. It forms the polar opposite to so much modern urban architecture, where drama and eye-catching, sculptural forms are so often seen as vital, within the aim of creating statement buildings. Purposefully the Stonehenge visitor centre makes no attempt to reference the stones themselves in its design language and never tries to compete with them in any way. The palette of materials – glass, limestone, chestnut, zinc for the roof – is also tempered and calm. 'It is quite a big building, because of the job it has to do,’ Quinlan says. 'But when you approach it, the building doesn’t seem that big at all, largely because there is a lot of landscape going on with the building placed within it. It almost disappears from some perspectives, which is fantastic. Although as an architect I probably shouldn’t be saying that.’
Looking forward to seeing it myself. moss is planning a trip down there when it opens as a birthday present (and as she never reads anything I write I can say that with impunity ;-)
