St George’s College Activity Centre

The Activity Centre at St George’s Weybridge, designed by Scott Brownrigg, replaces a 1980s pre-fabricated building with a 4,000 sq m, three-storey Centre. It supports the school’s objective to provide an inspirational environment for student and community engagement, and educate pupils on physical and mental wellbeing. The project brief presented several planning constraints. Located on Green Belt land, it was important for the client that the building blend in with the landscape. By utilising natural topography, the top of the building appears as a single storey form, flowing in unison with the landscape. A further challenge was posed by the eight-metre change in level across the site that created a disconnection between the school buildings and the higher-level athletics track. We proposed an Activity Centre that would link the School and the, previously under-used, athletics track in an elegant way. Key to achieving this was a processional staircase located at the heart of the building, based on the staircase at Wells Cathedral. This provides a physical and visual connection between all spaces and is a fundamental driver for the building’s design. Scott Brownrigg utilized VR fly-through models to engage with students, key stakeholders and the public to help the school’s fundraising campaign. A renewably-sourced, freeform Glulam roof structure and CLT deck spans the activity spaces and pushes the limits of structural timber to create a wave-like form that blends into the landscape. The various uses of space dictate the roof level and the ultimate form. The Glulam structure requires little energy to produce and bind large volumes of carbon from the atmosphere into the building structure. The main sports hall incorporates a glass-sprung sports floor, which allows for premiership-level play on a multi-sport floor surface. The largest of its kind in the UK, it is fully programmable using LED lighting to provide all types of sports, including premiership-level hockey as well as netball, basketball, volleyball, handball, football and badminton courts. The floor offers increased flexibility in the use of space, allowing the school to promote many sports to its students. It has a life span in excess of 70 years made from durable, recyclable products. The acoustics have been designed not only for high performance sport, but also to ensure the users feel comfortable, in turn enhancing social interaction, learning and productivity. The internal spaces are exposed to natural timber, which comes with a calming connection to nature and the surrounding woodland, reducing stress levels, and improving concentration and happiness. The vision for this project was to create an ‘activity’ centre, not a sports centre, reinforcing the vision to deliver ‘activity for all’. Physical inactivity poses a major threat to public health; attractive, accessible environments improve engagement in physical activity. Unique to this project, the design also incorporates a Mental Performance Zone, with aims to support a healthy mental state.