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The visitor centre building itself will be sited in the south east quadrant at Airman's Crossroads, with the car park southwest of the building alongside the A360. In the northeast quadrant will be the coach park and the services/utilities building, behind an existing line of beech trees and fractionally outside the boundary line of the World Heritage Site.
It's worth noting at this point that Denton Corker Marshall's website doesn't current carry a description of the visitor centre plans that will actually go ahead - it still has their old designs for the site at Countess Roundabout. This is a shame.
Here's a (poor) image of the model, looking roughly west. The A344 and A360 and other labels are marked (by me).
Airman's Crossroads will be remodelled as a roundabout and all buildings and facilities will be as light-touch as possible leaving open the possibility of removal in future with as little damage as possible to the underlying landscape.
The visitor centre itself comprises two square 'pods' (rooms) beneath a canopy of metal covered with a membrane to reduce reflectiveness and visibility from elsewhere. One room will be primarily of glass, the other of wood. One will contain the cafe/restaurant and retail spaces and the other will be the primary interpretation gallery/exhibition. The metal roof is raised above and extends beyond covering these rooms, supported around its periphery on all sides by thin columns to provide a 'cloisters' effect on all sides of the building. The edges of the roof will be perforated to cast patterns of light and shadow.
There's an opportunity here for some alignment fun, but the archtects are against the idea in principle - they don't want to attempt to link the building to the monument itself and this is a deliberate decision.
Nevertheless, the wide gap between the two separate 'pods' (rooms) will obviously create a sightline and in the easterly direction this will be targetted at the gap in Fargo Plantation that is occupied by Bowl Barrow 56 and ploughed-out ring ditch/barrow 30 (those are the RCHME refnums) at the western end of the Cursus.
As soon as I've sussed out the exact azimuth, I'll update this thread with the dates on which sunrise will occur along this axis (it'll be something like 10-12° N of East so the beginning of April/September will be the time to observe it. (Update 2009-11-09: I've now worked out the first approximation for these dates, which you can read about here).
All waste (including sewage) will be taken to the services building and processed on site, so there will be no 'back' of the visitor centre cluttered with dustbins etc.
Ground source heat pumps will provide power, water will be harvested on site and a nearby aquifer will be tapped. All grey water will be filtered and processed for reuse at the services building. There are no plans for solar panels (too reflective, would make the building more intrusive in the landscape) or wind turbines.
The "hugging stones" from the present visitor centre car park - ie the non-original sarsen and bluestone megaliths at the top of the ramp to the ticket gates - will be relocated to the east side of the new visitor centre, although the architects seems to be somewhat concerned about the possible "shattering" effects of direct sunlight exposure (!).
Reconstructions of examples of the types of ancient houses uncovered at Durrington Walls during the Stonehenge Riverside Project will be erected to the south east of the visitor centre buildings - I hope with their doorway openings oriented to the NE or they'll be rather windy :-)
Wind may be a major factor here, the design of the roof is somewhat airfoil in shape and it's going to be subjected, with no screening, to the prevailing south west winds which are considerably fierce at times. I was assured they'd modelled the stresses and are confident it won't get torn away in winter :-) (hat tip to Hugo Jenks)
At Stonehenge itself, the existing car park will be reprofiled to the previous landscape contours where possible and returned to grass aside from a small area for the low-impact transit (shuttle buses) to turn around in - so the majority of the A344 from Airman's Corner to the existing facilities will actually be retained, though closed to traffic. The architects are keen to preserve the sites of the three mesolithic post holes (presently marked by white circles in the current car park), and these will continue be marked in some way.
The current shop will be converted into an underground facility for on-site staff (24h security need somewhere to rest) but all the temporary buildings, toilets etc will be removed and the hardstanding grassed over, including the A344 from the intersection with Byway 12 to where it meets the A303.
Overall, provided this is executed well and that the right decisions are made as to local residents' access to the monument continuing to be free and casual pedestrian access is preserved to the whole WHS's National Trust and English Heritage land outside the actual monument, I think these plans are a reasonable stop-gap measure and a great improvement to the current state of things.
Naturally, others will disagree.
Some of those may even be councillors who recently approved the planning application for a regional supermarket distribution centre ('megashed') at Solstice Park off the A303 in Amesbury, with all the attendant noise, light pollution, massive increase in HGV movements and ugliness associated with it.
If any of them dares pipe up in objection to these Stonehenge plans in my earshot, they won't know what's hit them.
--
simon
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