Places Leisure Eastleigh

To be eligible for external funding we needed to a design leisure centre which met Sport England’s requirements and any deviations to these had to be agreed upon with all stakeholders. The combination of limited funding, a risk-averse business model, and a set of constraining design guides often leads to bland ‘closed box’ designs which do not respond to the context.

Our design intent was to move the affordable leisure centre typology forward by emphasising the importance of natural daylight, as the top priority in creating healthy and appealing spaces. The evolution design concept is based upon people’s arrival at the site, it’s setting in the surrounding parkland, existing facilities and crucially maximising passive solar design opportunities.

The main hall and pool hall were organised so that the dry facilities are closest to the existing ‘All-weather pitch’ (AWP) and tennis courts.

In a typical leisure centre design the changing rooms, gym, and studios are locat­ed between the wet and dry halls. This results in dark spaces suffering from limited views out and external day­light.

In our design the wet and dry halls were offset and the central ’spine’ is stretched, breaking down the mass of the building.

We moved the fully glazed cafe to the front of the wet hall, the squash courts have a glazed back and are at the end of the dry sports hall. This gives people in the building extensive views of the surroundings while letting people in the park watch the action inside the leisure centre.

A top-lit circulation route runs between the halls letting people view the activities going on in the leisure centre and providing a sense of openness around the building.

The fitness suite and studios are located to the north and south of the building and have highly glazed facades on the first floor, where they are visible from outside and have views over the park setting.