ARCHITECT’S FOCUS
Timber roof cassettes improve the acoustics and look decorative (left), while The Pods’ exterior is surrounded by water (right) S&P ARCHITECTS
Architect Ron Wallwork explains why The Pods, which recently opened in Scunthorpe, is a truly innovative example of leisure centre design
How did you get involved with the North Lincolnshire Sports Academy – or the Pods, as it’s more commonly known? Designer Andrew Wright won the RIBA competition set by NLC and Yorkshire Forward in 2006. He had teamed up with Buro Happold for their structural expertise, us at S&P for our knowledge of sport and leisure buildings and Grant Associates for their landscaping skills. However, at the planning stage Andrew Wright Associates
withdrew from the project, and so we took the lead to deliver the building.
What was your brief? North Lincolnshire Council, together with the regional devel- opment agency Yorkshire Forward, wanted an iconic building that would help to regenerate the Central Park area in Scunthorpe and open it up to visitors. There was backing for a very
progressive leisure centre design – they were certainly looking for something much better than the standard crinkly tin shed.
THE TEAM
Architect: S&P Architects Concept Designer: Andrew Wright Associates Construction: Bowmer and Kirkland Structural engineering: Buro Happold Grant Associates: Landscape Architects Cost of complete project: £21m Funded by North Lincolnshire Council, with contributions from Yorkshire Forward (£8M) and Sport England (£750,000)
How would you define a 21st century sports centre? You have to create a socially-responsible building that gives the community something that they can really value and that they want to visit.
They should not be overpowering or noisy places – as many have been in the past. They should have a much more natural, tranquil feel, in line with the growing market for more esoteric pursuits such as meditation and yoga and the focus on individual wellness. We had a very creative brief for the Pods and in many ways it’s a one-off building – but at the same time it is very much the way things are going.
Can you describe some of the technical innovations used? This type of building would not have been possible 10 years ago. It’s one of the fi rst leisure buildings in the UK to be built using a free-form geo- desic design, where the structure is formed from connecting glulam (glued composite timber) beams to form an irregular triangular shell grid - it’s inspired by the structure and connectivity of soap bubbles.
The structure uses steel cylindrical nodes with a number
What was the inspiration for the design? Andrew Wright’s design consisted of a series of intercon- necting domes – using similar organic construction forms to the Eden Project in Cornwall, to create a building that would form itself out of the landscape in a very natural and organic way.
It was designed to be an environmentally-friendly building
that brought together both leisure and wellness concepts within the natural forms of the building.
26 Read Leisure Management online
leisuremanagement.co.uk/digital
of metal plates set at different angles to receive the beams, which are all of different lengths. It was possible structur- ally with advanced computer technology now available to calculate all the forces from the model and for that infor- mation to be readily transferable from CAD (design) to CAM (manufacture) – this allowed great freedom to explore all the exciting 3D possibilities. We were able to create interlaced domes exceeding 50m spans, with the building area exceeding 5000sq m.
ISSUE 1 2012 © cybertrek 2011
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76