Solstice Centre

The Solstice Centre is a new visitor centre for the Bronze Age monuments of Bodmin Moor, providing interpretation, education, and community facilities for one of England's least-known but most remarkable prehistoric landscapes. The site is remote and exposed, subject to the full force of the Atlantic weather systems that sweep in from the west.

The building responds to its landscape with a compressed, low-lying form that sits within rather than on the moorland. The roof is turfed, allowing the building to virtually disappear from the surrounding paths and lanes. The primary elevation, facing south and the car park, is clad in rough-cut Cornish granite — the same material used by the Bronze Age builders of the monuments it interprets.

Internally, the building is organised around a central atrium that brings daylight deep into the plan and provides a space for orientation and assembly. The interpretation galleries radiate from this central space, each dedicated to a different aspect of the prehistoric landscape: astronomy, agriculture, ritual, and settlement.

The project was developed in close collaboration with Cornwall Heritage Trust, archaeologists, local schools, and the farming families whose land surrounds the monuments. The building is designed to the highest standards of environmental sustainability, with a ground-source heat pump, rainwater harvesting, and a photovoltaic array concealed within the south-facing roof slope.