projectos

Giants Causeway Tourist Center

Fernando Lara and Humberto Hermeto

At the basis of our design proposal is a very simple question: how to make a building for such an impressive natural site? A building that should be able to blend in the landscape and receive 5000 visitors in a beautiful summer day. Flexibility and adaptability demands extensive open areas but how to provide such large spaces with minimum impact in the surroundings and at the same time allow for the visitors to have an experience compatible with the main attraction they are about to experience? Taking this question further, the main design problem was to achieve a building that was as impressive as the world heritage natural wonder without competing with it. In other words, the building should introduce the visitor to the wonders they are about to experience while at the same time being respectful to the natural magnitude.  But being a gateway to such a fantastic natural site demands that the visitor center be an outstanding structure.
an outstanding building to an outstanding natural site.
Therefore, the building should engage in a dialogue with nature, being as respectful as any man-made structure can be. Respect towards nature means for us a compatible scale, a minimal impact on the surrounding landscape and a true sustainability that allows for water management, low energy consumption, low maintanence and plenty of natural air circulation when weather permits.
From the encounter of those premises: the respect towards nature, the certainty that the natural site is more important and the belief in architecture as a transformative condition the main idea for the proposal was born:
we are designing the ground
Appropriating the entire available site, we departed from the idea that the structures, the open areas and the parking spaces should be approached as a whole. Such unity of design led us to think of the pavement and the shifting of ground levels as the main design ideas.

shifting grounds
From the beginning of the process is became clear that our design strategy consisted of moving ground levels up and down to achieve a building as integrated to the surrounding as possible while at the same time allowing spatial conditions that would enhance the experience of visiting the giants causeway. That strategy should relate metaphorically to the beautiful basalt formations of the causeway without, however, mimic its forms.
A simple act of ramping some spaces down below grade (when the programmatic uses require less visibility) or above grade (when visibility was necessary) directed all our moves from this point.
To organize the program a series of meandering strips 15 meters or 12 meters wide were laid on the ground and became the basis of the shifting grounds and the whole site planning. Those strips are slightly curved in plan to form an inviting concavity as a welcome entrance for the visitors. The 15 meter wide strips were conceived this way for maximizing parking spaces being it one central lane 5 meter wide (two way traffic and maneuvering) sided by two rows of parking spaces also 5 meters wide each (total of 203 parking spots for automobiles). The two parking strips have similar moves in plan and longitudinal section but do not fit precisely creating narrow gaps of grass between levels. The parking strips are also varying in level so that cars parked closer to the buildings (most normal days) would be hidden by the lower pavement and the shifting grounds of the remaining areas.
Converging with our idea of designing the ground while respecting nature, the parking areas are permeable and covered with permeable concrete blocks on the circulation areas and gravel on the parking areas.

The 12 meter wide strips that comprise the slabs that cover all indoor spaces were based on a structural span of 8 meters with 2 meters cantilevering at each side. That 2 x 8 x 2 module with beams spaced every 8 meters longitudinally allows greater flexibility for each unit of the program and at the same times standardizes construction to a faster and cheaper process. Every one of the transversal metallic beams is precisely the same. The columns also were designed to maximize the 12m steel beam and have only 3 different lengths: 3, 6 or 12 m. The fact that every beam is precisely the same and the columns are standardized contributes to lower construction costs on materials and also on less complexity.  Our proposal for achieving a meandering curved roof with standardized beams and columns has a structural logic based on the idea of shifting grounds.