Australian firm Denton Corker Marchalls - DCM - ’s solution for the visitor centre is in deliberate antithesis to the weighty monoliths. It is conceived as an 8m-high blade of a canopy, supported by a forest of 211 vertical and canted square-section columns, that oversails two main single-storey pods with a ticketing office between them. One steel-framed pod, clad in low-iron glass, contains a café, shop and education rooms; the other, timber-framed and clad in vertical planking of unfinished pre-weathered sweet chestnut, holds an exhibition space. An ancillary building containing stores and offices, and similarly finished in timber, hides behind a nearby hedge to the north. The centre is connected to the distant stones themselves by a fleet of 60-person-capacity “road trains” whose cabins are modelled on the Land Rovers that pull them.
PROJECT TEAM
Architect Denton Corker Marshall
Client English Heritage
Structural engineer Sinclair Knight Merz
M&E consultant Norman Disney & Young
Quantity surveyor Firmingers
Landscape architect Chris Blandford Associates
Project manager Gardiner & Theobald
Main contractor Vinci