University of Birmingham Sports Center | Birmingham

University of Birmingham Sports Centre

BIRMINGHAM

Year:       2012 - 2017
Cost:       £55m
Sector:    Sport  | Leisure
Client:     University of Birmingham

The University of Birmingham that provides the university with a prominent gateway and accessible route between the hilltop campus and town. The world-class sports facilities for the city’s athletes are shared between town and gown, creating another important social link.

Located on a former brownfield site, adjacent to the Edgbaston Conservation Area, the Centre forms a gateway to the University’s Edgbaston campus and expresses a welcoming civic identity on the busy A38. A public colonnade encourages informal access to the building and onward to the campus and provides a glimpse of the swimming pool through a glazed, double-height façade. Once inside, there are views between the pavilions, the gym, pool and sports hall, and the reception desk is surmounted by a dramatic climbing wall.

The scheme is arranged as four discreet volumes handsomely, detailed in brick and bronze, each devoted to a separate use – swimming pool, gym and changing rooms, sports halls and car park – that shift in plan and section in response to the topography and to articulate the entrance. This emphasises its importance to the university and to Birmingham; the massing and materiality of the scheme speaks of civic architecture rather than the more usual ‘shed’ architecture of swimming and sports centres.

The building is powered via waste heat generated by the University’s new central CHP plant and, with 300m2 of solar PV panels, achieves BREEAM Excellent and the onerous EPC target rating of ‘A’ – the first for a sports centre in the UK.

COLLABORATIVE PARTNERS

University of Birmingham | Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands | Arup | Couch Perry Wilkes| Space & Place