The approach taken was to rebuild as much as possible, demolishing and stripping the old leaky gym back to essential concrete infrastructure, retaining basement floor slabs, ground floor concrete structure, posts and lateral brick walls, to mitigate additional embodied carbon from complete demolition.

The building has been thermally upgraded. The roof of the existing gym has been completely replaced to reduce heat loss and to introduce controlled natural light, sunlight and natural ventilation to the subterranean space.

The roof of the gym was carefully arranged to provide all servicing functions, light, ventilation, heat and security. The services were designed to guidance from Sport England to offer increased flexibility. The artificial lighting was developed to control glare and avoid occupants being dazzled when looking up towards the ceiling. The luminaires were positioned with reference to the field of view whilst playing badminton.

The gym has a mixed mode operation and can cater for large events with mechanical ventilation with heat reclaim. When small groups of people use the space, natural ventilation through opening rooflights is satisfactory. The gym is heated with radiant panels mounted to the ceiling and fed by a low temperature heating system.

Air source heat pumps provide the heat source for both domestic hot water and the low temperature heat delivery through the building.

The building is being managed well. The first year of in-use data shows relatively low energy consumption and a significant improvement over the original building.