The new £18.5m Visitor Centre is a state-of-the-art tourist attraction and features an illuminating exhibition, showcasing the myths and science behind the Giant's Causeway. An energy efficient building, designed by award winning architects Heneghan-Peng. The Visitor Centre covers 2,500 sq metres, with the roof enabling patrons a 360 degree view of the coastline. Importantly, the orientation of the building allows it to integrate seamlessly with its surroundings. This is helped by the roof covering being planted with local grasses, which allows the building to be disguised in the folds of the surrouding hills.
A high standard of concrete finish was required throughout this project. The sloping soffit of the visitors centre was cast in white concrete and had three fold lines included, which altered the fall from one area to another. As the building was of a non-orthogonal design, the main ceiling was laid to pre-determined falls and was made up of more than 800 individually cut, parallelogram shaped plywood sheets.
With this in mind, Mastercraft Construction teamed up with PERI, the largest provider and manufacturer of formwork and scaffolding systems globally, on the complex formwork aspect of the new Giant's Causeway Visitor Centre.
Further interesting features of the building are the inclined wall and curved tunnel walls, where no tie holes were permitted. The inclined wall is 5.5m high x 12.5m long, with a 20 degree incline and curved tunnel walls are also 5.5m high. This required not only an ingenious formwork solution but also a practical construction solution and proved to be one of our biggest challenges to date. A[[ this was overcome with good engineering techniques, provided by a joint effort from our experienced site team and our formwork provider. The finished plywood patterns on these walls had to be formed using specially imported plywood from Germany, which were 5.4m x 2m.