Description:
The Céide Fields site is the most extensive Stone Age monument in the world. A visitor centre was built in its sensitive environment to attract up to 100.000 visitors a year and bring a tourist industry to an under-developed part of the west of Ireland. The building brief included four requirements: first, a space for an exhibition for the three main topics to be interpreted (archaeology, geology and botany); second, an audio-visual theatre to explain the region; third, space for an interpretation of the hinterland, and fourth, restaurant and toilets. The building houses an exhibition and visitors facilities leading to trails around the excavations. The pyramid shape was chosen as a natural extension of the landscape, a unified peak growing out of bog like the nearby island rocks in the sea. Durable materials like limestone, stainless steel, glass and landscaping are used so the building will age gracefully. The pyramid contains a central rotunda lit from the glazed apex. Above the rotunda, an all weather viewing gallery gives a bird's eye view of the fields. The interior and exhibition, whose function is to introduce the story of man and the landscape based on the local archaeological discoveries, reflects the themes of the exterior landscape. Displays are set amid "peat banks" with a restored 5000 year old pine tree centerpiece which was found in the bog.