Working on behalf of Main Contractor Interclass, PHd were appointed to support a PCSA for Birmingham City Council, to design and deliver a new health and fitness facility at the Alexander Stadium, as part of their Legacy Plan following the Commonwealth Games.
The new facility is within the dated and under-utilized existing High Performance Centre’s (HPC) footprint. Creating a welcoming and inclusive health and fitness gym, alongside re-organised indoor athletics offerings to the HPC. The facility includes a 120 station gym, spin studio, as well as new changing and welfare areas for both the health and fitness gym and the wider athletics and sports facilities within the Alexander Stadium estate.
The South-West corner of the HPC was established as the most appropriate position for the proposal, where a new façade including new main entrance could be created, appropriately positioned to provide step free access from new accessible car parking spaces and covered cycle parking.
To ensure the existing athletics facilities were not negatively impacted by the proposal, extensive consultation was conducted with Sport England, local user groups and sports clubs, as well as a full public consultation exercise. Following this, in order to mitigate any loss to the existing athletics offer, the proposal was to provide a new mezzanine structure within the HPC, creating an upper floor space to reduce the loss to the HPC hall.
The existing building had a dated façade, so a key design goal was to create a new façade which will suite with the much newer neighbouring GMAC facility and the main Alexander Stadium. The proposal uses contemporary high quality materials of matching colours and tones to the wider estate, such as micro-rib composite cladding, pre-weathered timber cladding and glazing with feature blue coloured detailing.
