swimming pools, spas & sauna
Oundle School Sports Centre
Saunders Boston Architects is working with this historic school to create the world’s first 50m swimming pool constructed from Cross Laminated Timber.
the colour and pattern of the tiling with the style and route of the duct work, this is something SBA wanted to improve upon without sacrificing practicality or longevity. Timber is very robust if detailed correctly in a swimming pool environment, the visual quality timber panels can have a very high- quality finish and jointing system, while eliminating tiling to most areas. Another benefit was the ability to eliminate any high-level ductwork. This is achieved by the cassette construction roof which is able to deal with the large span of the building as well as the air being supplied through the void in the middle onto the rooflights and through into the pool hall itself. The project is currently on site and is
OUNDLE School is one of the UK’s leading co-educational boarding and day schools. Saunders Boston Architects (SBA) has been working with Oundle School for the last two years to develop its new Sports Centre, part of their wider sports masterplan vision “to provide the best in sport facilities and education”. Oundle School set SBA a clear brief for
the project, not only from a facility perspective, but about how the new building needed to reflect the school’s quality and heritage. The first stage was a feasibility study to ensure the facility format met the brief and the swimming provision. The study looked at eight potential options including both 25m and 50m configurations, some with multiple pool solutions. The final facility mix comprises: • 50m, six lane pool • Eight badminton court sports hall • Hospitality facilities for 250 people • Café • Fitness suite • Changing facilities for the wet, dry and outdoor sports facilities “Flexibility is the key to buildings that
need to have a long shelf life. At Oundle School, the spaces need to adapt between
school and public use, whilst also accommodating sport and other leisure and assembly functions,” says Martin Lindus, director at SBA and project lead. Flexibility is incorporated into the
swimming pool with the ability to transition for a 50m training and events pool to a 25m swimming and a variable depth pool due to the submersible bulkhead and floating floor. “Sports centres are complex facilities. Add
in a 50m pool and a multi-use building, the design solution becomes more sophisticated with key design considerations being flexibility, safeguarding, operation and of course providing a state-of-the-art facility,” says Lindus. The building is being constructed using
Cross Laminated Timber (CLT), moving away from a traditional concrete or steel frame most commonly used in leisure. There are only a handful of CLT leisure centres in the UK and this project will be the world’s first 50m swimming pool constructed from the material. CLT was selected because of the speed of erecting a pre-finished frame on a sensitive site with adjacent neighbours – minimising time and noise and the increasing quality of the environment. Most swimming pools are recognised by
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being constructed by Graham Construction with Eurban providing the CLT structure and FT Leisure supplying the pool filtration. The Sports Centre is due to complete early 2020, when the second phase will begin to demolish the existing swimming pool.
www.saundersboston.co.uk
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