Process: Giant’s Causeway Visitor Centre
The giant Finn MacCool, a hunter and warrior, wanted to walk from Northern Ireland to Scotland without getting his feet wet. His quest was to battle his enemy Benandonner. And so he threw gigantic boulders from the cliffs into the sea and created a paved path: Giant’s Causeway. The Irish love legends, so it comes as no surprise that they came up with a myth to explain the astounding geometrical rock formations of mostly hexagonal basalt stones arranged nearly without seams on Northern Ireland’s Antrim Coast. For many years scientists sought an explanation and eventually came to the conclusion that neither humans nor giants had been involved. Instead, temperature shifts that occurred some 60 million years ago caused the lava flow to solidify in this eccentric form. In keeping with the giant’s valiant gesture, the architects Róisín Heneghan and Shih-Fu Peng made an intervention in the UNESCO World Heritage site and cut two folds into the ground nearby; they lifted one corner and inserted the visitor centre underneath it, and lowered the other one to make room for cars to park. Between them a grass ramp leads straight to the ridgeline. The structure is carefully nestled in the landscape, leaves the view to the coast, a certified Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), intact, and, with the help of the grass roof and basalt stone facade, becomes an integral – yet barely visible – part of the site. In cooperation with the client, the National Trust, and the specialists of the different firms, they developed the architectural entrée to World Heritage, in the literal sense, “stone by stone”.
