Godolphin and Latymer Sports Building
The new sports building provides modern and flexible sports spaces for students aged 11-18 at the independent day school for girls.
The practice was originally appointed by the school in 2010 to develop a masterplan identifying spatial requirements at the school, determining whether any of the existing building stock needed demolition, what could replace it, exact location of new facilities and how to prioritise and phase the building programme.
The school has sought to improve its facilities with a particular emphasis on the provision of high quality sports facilities within the constraints of the dense urban environment. The existing sports hall dated from 1950 and was undersized for various sports, some of which are considered important to the school and its identity, such as trampolining, badminton, basketball, indoor hockey, cricket and netball.
Godolphin and Latymer has a tight, walled site in the sensitive Bradmore Conservation Area and within the curtilage of listed buildings. A great deal of thought went into minimising the impact of what is a relatively large new building within this context. The building is set back from Iffley Road behind a smaller building on the edge of the street, and changes in the colour and bonding of the brickwork modulate the elevation to break down the volume of the sports hall.
The new building provides a four-court sports hall, a fitness suite and dance studio along with a new classroom, viewing gallery and office facilities.
The external fabric of the building is carefully designed to allow the building to be naturally ventilated and naturally lit whilst creating optimum conditions for a wide variety of sports.
The predominant material throughout the site is brick: the variation in brickwork and its colour, texture, pattern and age, are distinctive characteristics of the school buildings. Responding to this, the upper walls of the new building are articulated with a series of alternating vertical brick recesses. Perforated bronze screens obscure linear windows and louvre openings to create an attractive, non-uniform pattern across the facade.
