A BLUE chip firm which designed the Ferrari Museum in Italy are among the winning team of a competition to design a new £5m visitor centre planned for the Fens.

Cambs Times: Great Fen Visitor Centre. Winning designGreat Fen Visitor Centre. Winning design (Image: Archant)

A team consisting of Shiro Studio Ltd, Mesh Partnership and Equals Consulting, of London, have been announced as winners of the prestigious Great Fen Visitor Centre competition.

Cambs Times: Great Fen Visitor Centre.Winning designGreat Fen Visitor Centre.Winning design (Image: Archant)

The event attracted 201 entries from across Europe including Wisbech Boathouse business centre designers, Feilden Mawson, who were announced as runners up.

Cambs Times: Great Fen Visitor Centre, Runner Up.Great Fen Visitor Centre, Runner Up. (Image: Archant)

The winning design comprises a contemporary, light and airy centre with large viewing windows in a building clad with charred bog oak.

The visitor centre will be built between Huntingdon and Peterborough between Holme Fen National Nature Reserve and Woodwalton Fen National Nature Reserve, near Ramsey.

Kate Carver, project manager of the Great Fen Visitor Centre, hoped the build would start within the next five years, depending on funding.

“We have a fantastic design that will fit beautifully into the landscape,” she said.

“Great Fen is one of the most important wildlife projects in Europe and is home to a great variety of wildlife, much of it unique to the area.”

RIBA Competitions managed the design competition on behalf of the Great Fen, a partnership which comprises the Environment Agency, Huntingdonshire District Council, Middle Level Commissioners, Natural England and The Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire.

The visitor centre and surrounding area will transform sweeping acres of Fen landscape into a mosaic of habitat comprising pools, ponds and ditches, reed bed, fen, bog and marsh, wet grassland, dry grassland; woodland and scrub.