Inverclyde Residences

Contract Value

£12

Area

6,500m2

Completion

2017

Client

sportscotland

Contract

Single Stage Design & Build

Architects - Reiach and Hall Architects

Project Manager - Robinson Low Francis

Structural Engineer - Goodson Associates

Services Engineer - FES

Landscape Architect - Hirst Landscape Architects

Main Contractor - Morrison Construction

Awards

Architects Journal (AJ Awards) Leisure Project of the Year 2018

BCI Awards Cultural & Leisure Project of the Year (Highly Commended) 2018

Civic Trust Selwyn Goldsmith Award for Universal Design (Commendation) 2018

Scottish Design Award Finalist 2018

Reiach and Hall, Architects have delivered the UK’s first residential, fully inclusive sports centre - designed for users at all levels of physical and sensory ability, accommodating up to 120 wheelchair users at any one time.

Inverclyde is open to high performance athletes, sports clubs, school/education groups, governing bodies, and the local community - combining state-of-the-art sports facilities with a fully accessible residential facility, containing 60 twin-bedrooms.

The first design move was to place the new facilities in front of the existing building providing a new façade to the centre. Due to the number and disposition of mature trees on the site, the idea of a ribbon, weaving its way through the trees became a design motif that helped to resolve the incorporation of the new spaces into the site, at the same time as providing a new image for the centre. We took inspiration from athletes breaking through the winner’s ribbon in a race or the ribbons used by gymnasts during rhythmic events.

The residential component, takes full advantage of the site’s elevation, delivering both a marker building for views towards the site and providing an outlook over the treetops for dramatic views over the Firth of Clyde and the islands. This site demanded a suitably high response, so the building proudly lifts its head and looks over the prospect of the Firth of Clyde to the west and up to the hills to the east.

Value added through design.

This is an exemplar building which can accommodate all building users being wheelchair users - up to 120 wheelchair users can simultaneously stay in the accommodation block and all the spaces in the building have been designed to safely and comfortably be accessible. We are not aware of any other sports/public building which can accommodate 100% of its facilities being simultaneously used by wheelchair users. We believe the building is the first of its kind.

At a strategic level our team chose to deliver best practice throughout, not regulatory minimums. This informed every aspect of the design from corridor widths to ironmongery selection, to colour schemes and signage, to lift provision etc. The width of the circulation routes through the public areas of the building are generally 3m wide (minimum) and the reception area is 7.1m wide. On bedroom floors circulation routes are 2.2m wide. Lobbies to lifts are also generously sized to accommodate large numbers of wheelchair users.

We designed the building to rise from the hillside so that users could appreciate the magnificent views. We included four 18-person evacuation lifts - our lift traffic analysis demonstrated that even when the bedrooms are fully occupied by wheelchair users, the building exceeds normal best practice for residential accommodation.

When the Boccia UK team have attended residential camps, they benefit from a unique array of accessible facilities. Every bedroom in the centre can accommodate two wheelchair users, making it the first of its kind in the UK. The ceiling hoists in the bedrooms saves “half an hour every morning”, giving the athletes more time to train, work out, eat and recover – all essential components of the average day in this high-performance environment. sportScotland.org.

Scottish Powerchair Football Training camp: “It’s a fantastic facility, it’s got everything we need for the players from the accessible rooms and accessible facilities. The sports hall is a fantastic court to play on – it gives us plenty of room to do all our drills and sessions. Having all the facilities in the one building means we aren’t traveling and given that all the players come from different clubs it gives the national team to bond, which is fantastic.”

Speaking at Scottish Parkinson International Open Terry McLernon MBE (Chari, Table Tennis Scotland) said “This is ideal, this is amazing. We think we will double the number of participants next year just with this building … people walked in and went ‘wow’ look at this, I think the facility has made it a success. The table tennis is good - they love table tennis, but I think the building has made it, because of how good it is!” in addition; Cecilia Hiort (Table Tennis Player Sweden) said “We arrived the day before just to look at the venue and we were amazed from the very start.”