Elemental by design

Irish Arts Review

Elemental by designAuthor(s): John McLaughlinSource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 29, No. 3 (AUTUMN [SEPTEMBER - NOVEMBER 2012]),pp. 124-127Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23278478 .

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Elemental

by design

John McLaughlin assesses heneghan peng's

dramatically sited but elegantly unobtrusive visitor

centre for the Giant's Causeway in Antrim

J

■

The

Giant's Causeway is a dramatic landscape of

columnar volcanic basalt on the north coast of

County Antrim in Northern Ireland, It was formed

around 60 million years ago during the tertiary period by

great flows of basalt lava that welled up through cracks in the

earth's crust and spread out over 3000 square kilometres cre

ating layer upon layer of rock. Some of the layers are as much

as 30 metres thick. The specific formation of the Causeway is

due to the fact that these basalt layers cooled rapidly in a

river valley which caused them to contract into polygons

which then cracked vertically producing stacked vertical

columns of organ pipe-like structures buried in the earth. The

rock was subsequently exposed by glacial erosion which cre

ated the unique landscape that we see today. The volcanic

lava reached over to the western coast of Scotland and the

same polygonal columns can be seen holding up the coast of

the western Scottish isle of Staffa near Mull which is what

gave rise to the legend of a giant who built the Causeway

between the two places. In 1986 the Giant's Causeway was

entered into the register of UNESCO natural world heritage

sites - one of only three on the islands of Ireland and Britain.

The listing was for three different reasons - the site is signif icant as a geological formation; as a unique landscape; and

for the role that it played in the emergence of the science of

geology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The

other two natural world heritage sites are the islands of St

Kilda off the north coast of Scotland, and the Jurassic coast

of east Dorset in the South of England.

In the Victorian era the causeway became a major tourist

attraction, and the land around it was acquired by a local

124 IRISH ARTS REVIEW I AUTUMN 2012

Elemental

by design

John McLaughlin i



ELEMENTAL BY DESIGN ARCHITECTURE

business consortium who began to charge visitors to enter the

site. In the 1960s, the site passed into the ownership of the

UK's National Trust who began to conserve and improve

access to it. The causeway has consistently attracted over half

a million visitors per year and is one of the principal tourist

attractions on the island of Ireland. In 2000, the visitor cen

tre on adjoining land burnt down and, in 2003 a site visit by UNESCO made a number of recommendations about how

the site should be developed and conserved into the future.

Following the UNESCO report, a consortium of stakehold

ers led by the Northern Ireland Executive decided to promote

an international architectural competition administered by the

Union International des Architectes (UIA) to select a design

for the new visitor centre. The area of new building required

was 1,800 m2 with a significant requirement for car and coach

1 Giant's Causeway visitor centre

2 View of the honeycombe middle causeway rock formations looking out to sea. County Antim ©National Trust images/Mike Williams www.nationaltr ust.org.uk)

1 Giant's Causeway visitor centre

2 View of the honeycombe middle causeway rock formations looking out to sea. County Antim ©National Trust images/Mike Williams www.nationaltr ustorg.uk)



parking facilities to facilitate growing visitor numbers. The

competition, judged by an international jury chaired by the

eminent Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa attracted over two

hundred entries from as far afield as Japan and was won by

Dublin-based heneghan peng architects.

Winning the Giant's Causeway competition was another

achievement for heneghan peng who had already proved

themselves very accomplished architects with an extremely

impressive record of competition successes. By 2005 they

had already won the biggest architecture competition ever

held - for the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo - another

UNESCO world heritage site, as well as a number of other

major architecture competitions.

heneghan peng's approach to the causeway site was to

treat the building as part of the landscape by burying it in a

fold in the ground, and to recess the car park into a second

fold with a grass pathway to the ridge of the site dividing the

two folds. In the architect's description: 'The folding land

scape respects the horizontality of the site without mimick

ing nature, giving an introduction and route to the Giant's

Causeway, but also to the Causeway Coast. There is no

longer a building and a landscape, but building becomes

landscape and landscape itself remains spectacular and

iconic.' The delicate weaving of the building into the land is achieved through the projection of geometries found on the

site. These geometries are then rigorously followed through

out the building generating not only the lines of primary and

secondary structures, but also surface patterns and the forms

of fixed and movable elements like counters and benches.

The assessors cited heneghan peng's entry as 'exuding a sim

ple and quiet monumentality that evoked a strong sense of

drama and expectation...the design responded to the elemen

tal power within the geological formation of the site with

scale and grandeur.. .The silence and emptiness evoked by the

3 Giant's Causeway visitor centre interior view

U The folding landscape solution to the necessary carpark

horizontal and rising lines created an air of expectation and

charged the ridgeline and the entry to the space of the coastal

landscape with a special emotional impact. The site arrange

ment appropriately offers the visitor a view up along the grass

covered ramp to the ridge and the sky above at the very point

of entering the site.' Following a public display of the winning

and shortlisted entries, the architects were appointed to design

the building and the project progressed towards planning until

2007 when a rival scheme on private land adjoining the site

was announced and submitted for planning approval. This

rival scheme appeared to be given political support by mem

bers of the Northern Ireland Executive and its promoter was

reported to be a member of the Democratic Unionist Party

(DUP). There was considerable criticism of this move and,

after a period of hiatus, the National Trust emerged as the pro

moter of the visitor centre project with heneghan peng's

scheme reinstated as the preferred design. Detailed design was

developed during 2009 with construction beginning in 2010

and the building was completed in July 2012. The Giant's Causeway Visitor Centre is a remarkable

building for many reasons. As opposed to considering the

building as an object in the landscape, it integrates the

qualities of landscape and architecture into a synthesised

whole, an unusual approach in contemporary Irish architec

ture. The green fields of the causeway coast literally cloak

the roof of the centre which lies buried below the ground

like the basalt columns. Grass continues down the ramp

connecting roof and entry levels so that the building's only

facades emerge from the ground facing south and west.

Thanks to this the building has no visual impact on the

causeway itself and cannot be seen from the causeway coast

to the north or east. The fold of the carpark dips down on

the southeast side revealing a retaining wall of polished

black basalt reminiscent of Maya Lin's Vietnam War memo

rial in Washington. This retaining wall is clearly visible from

the road approaching the site from Portrush, where a screen

of elongated lozenge shaped columns of polished basalt

rises out of the ground and supports the grass platform of

5 Photo montage: Giant's Causeway visitor centre and environment

4

126 IRISH ARTS REVIEW I AUTUMN 2012

3 Giant's Causeway visitor centre interior view

4 The folding landscape solution to the necessary carpark

5 Photo montage: Giant's Causeway visitor centre and environment



ELEMENTAL BY DESIGN ARCHITECTURE

the visitor centre's roof (Fig 1). The centre is entered through

these columns and the space inside beneath the hillside is like

a large roomy cave punctuated with linear rooflights cut out

of the sloping roof. The floor is made of polished concrete

with an exposed basalt aggregate suggestive of the gravels

lying above the solid basalt strata below. The telluric nature

of the building is evocative of ancient architectures and this

is part of the subtle power of the project.

The columns holding up the cave are made of basalt, a

'weak stone', which means that though it is strong in compres

sion, it has little tensile strength, and is liable to crack. Because

of this it is usually ground down to gravel and used in road

building. The architects developed a structural solution based

on keeping the material in permanent tension by passing steel

rods through the stones and tightening them so that the basalt

is always compressed. This method of construction is usually

touch and an elegance of detail; you are delivered out into

the space of the shore in a calm and restrained manner.

The National Trust places a high value on sustainability

and wanted to use materials that were locally sourced.

Unlike many contemporary buildings the stone used is actual

local stone, quarried in nearby Kilrea, Co Derry. They have

also incorporated an ambitious suite of environmental meas

ures into the servicing of the building including a geothermal

heating system and a rainwater harvesting system which is

used to supply toilets and wash hand basins. All of this is

seamlessly incorporated into the overall design so that these

measures are quietly working in the background. The

National Trust's commitment to sustainable design is highly

commendable. A building of this quality is rare anywhere

and it is hard to overstate the importance of the bodies

involved - the leadership shown by UNESCO, and especially

THE ARCHITECTS HAVE DEPLOYED A RESTRAINED LANGUAGE OF CONCRETE, GLASS, STEEL, OAK AND BASALT TO FRAME A SIMPLE SEQUENCE OF SPACES

used in engineering high-performance concrete structures such

as bridges. The result is that the visitor centre is held up by

slender columns of basalt which create a visual screen between

inside and outside. It is a beautiful structural solution and is

uniquely suited to a context of rock strata.

The Causeway Visitor Centre is immaculately made. The

architects have deployed a restrained language of concrete,

glass, steel, oak and basalt to frame a simple sequence of

spaces. The order is logical and clear leading from ticket desk

past the cafe, shop and exhibition, and then out through a

cleft in the hillside that opens onto the pathway down to the

causeway itself. The precision of design and fabrication is

exemplary and the handling of details has a purity that means

that visitors are easily orientated throughout the spaces. The

floor of the centre - cooly handled with shallow steps and

ramps along the route - slopes gently up as you ascend

towards the ridge of the coast. Though the architecture has

a power it is never overpowering, thanks to a lightness of

the National Trust in making a project like this happen. It is

a great credit to Graham Thompson, the Project Director

whose enthusiasm for the work has been critical to its real

ization. It is a great achievement by heneghan peng archi

tects who have delivered on the promise of a compelling

architecture born of a deep sense of place which, unusually,

is even better in reality than in the design drawings.

heneghan peng are also designing an extensive refurbish

ment of the National Gallery in Dublin which is due to reopen

next year. They have been selected to represent Ireland at the

2012 Venice Architecture Biennale this autumn. The exhibi

tion, titled 'Shifting Ground', will embody elements of the

Causeway Centre design in a site specific installation in the

Arsenale making connections between the two sites. ■

Photography by Marie-Louise Halpenny except for Figs 2 and 5. The 13th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice continues until 25 November 2012.

John McLaughlin is the curator of the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2012 which explores the theme of architecture and globalization under the title 'Shifting Ground'.

AUTUMN 2012 I IRISH ARTS REVIEW 127



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Elemental by design