The new visitors centre is a series of buildings laid out as a clachan, a settlement or village.
Glencoe Visitors Centre
Contributed by:
Jo Colwell
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The new Glencoe Visitors Centre replaced the controversial old centre in 2002. Sustainability was a prime consideration and the centre is built from sustainable timber. The burning of locally sourced woodchips for energy, makes the Visitor Centre CO2 neutral in operation.
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Overview
Visitors to the Highlands have grown used over the years to the site of the National Trust for Scotland Visitor Centre, on the north side of the main A82 in lower Glen Coe. This was built in the 1970s in a fairly intrusive location in the centre of this spectacular glen, and by the 1990s it was simply too small to cope with the numbers of visitors.
In 2002 the old visitor centre was removed, and a start was made on returning its site and car park to nature. May 2002 saw the opening of the NTS's new £3m visitor centre on the south side of the main road and lower down the glen, nearer to the village of Glencoe.
The new visitors centre is a series of buildings laid out as a clachan, a settlement or village. Together they form a spindly "H" shaped structure, built on stilts just above the ground set amongst the birch wood. The stilts are intended to ensure a light footprint that doesn't disturb the tree roots or groundwater. The green design of the Visitor Centre carries through to the use of filtered water from a nearby burn, and the on-site treatment of sewage.
The buildings are mostly made from timber, and all of the timber used comes from sustainable sources in Scotland. Energy efficiency is very high, with recycled paper insulation in the walls, and sheep's wool instead of foam around the windows. Heating comes from a boiler (which also provides hot water to the showers in the campsite) burning locally sourced woodchips, making the Visitor Centre CO2 neutral in operation.
No development of this sort can ever be uncontroversial, and the new visitor centre is no exception. In part the concerns have been on environmental grounds: and it is true that however green the centre itself, the visitors driving to it are not. But most visitors will be passing by anyway, and the new centre is certainly less of an intrusion into the landscape than its predecessor.
Key features
energy
land use
materials
regeneration
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