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Modern visitor centres are a puzzle. There is a requirement to put a new building beside a site of particular significance; in other words, the last place a new building is wanted. This often leads to a tension between the quality of the original place and the inevitable disturbance of a new structure with its attendant car parking. Typical strategies for dealing with this include concealment, camouflage or mimicry. Here in Sherwood, the bold decision to remove the buildings onto an adjacent site opens up a new opportunity for considering the relationship of the buildings to a broader context.

We consider the visitor centre as being the whole pocket in the wider landscape. The building is like a villa on the edge of the town overlooking the open pocket or park. It is a gateway that forms a landmark at the threshold between the town and the land.

The idea of the centre as a gateway is underlined by a singular cut through the main building. It suggests a chasm or gateway through to the park beyond. As you begin to walk through this you are presented with the most important visitor facilities. Just inside the door is information and the retail space, this opens on to the rest area which leads easily to a café. That in turn opens onto the park and to outdoor seating in an enclosed garden.

As soon as you enter the building you are aware of a bold staircase that ascends to the exhibition spaces above. Visible bridges and aerial walkways, all visible immediately from the front door, reinforce the idea of a journey up. Visitors will already have seen the elegant plywood façade of 'rose windows' from the square below. We rise up through the building following a route through a variety of rooms. These spaces present different opportunities to use different kinds of daylight, or none at all. One moves from views of the town to views of the wood and the colliery. The exhibits can be referred back to the real landscape.

The building is designed as two lightweight plywood boxes sitting on an earthwork podium. The boxes, like lanterns, provide luminous exhibition spaces overlooking the landscape. The podium supports the boxes and provides thermal mass for the lighter upper spaces. The architecture is based on this contrast between the light and the heavy.

The roof and the east and west walls of the lanterns are designed to allow controllable, glare-free light throughout the day. The south face has a plywood lattice supporting a cob-like earthen structure. It blocks most south light and absorbs heat. It is a contemporary adaptation of half-timbering, a coming together of earth and wood. The north wall overlooking the park has a plywood lattice glazed with a special laminated glass. The extremely thin silver bark of birch trees is dried and sealed into the glass. It will give a diffuse, luminous effect like a paper lantern. The method of peeling off the bark will give a lacy, half transparent appearance.