David Morley Architects on how to score in the sports sector

Simon Reid and Kate Jackson-Hulme of Reid Architects put their questions to DMA’s David Morley and Andy Mytom

Finding your form in sport

Simon Reid: We’d love to work in sport. What are the tips?

David Morley: When we started off doing sports projects, it predated Sport England. Lord’s was a competition because an architect on the panel had seen something we’d done on the front cover of a magazine and liked our design approach — track record was less important to him. That led to a series of other sports projects.

Andy Mytom: I think it’s about being seen doing quality work elsewhere.

DM: But one thing that helps is networking with consultants. A lot of bids we do are team bids. We have consultants we work with regularly on the sports side such as Max Fordham. If you want to bolster your sports experience, it helps.

Kate Jackson-Hulme: As a small practice, would we have to spend a lot of time researching, and would that be cost-effective? 

DM: There’s always more effort to get up to the same level as a practice that’s more experienced. But all architecture is about bespoke, customised, specific products, so it’s not that different from doing a very customised response on a sensitive site for a different building type. The beauty of sports projects is that there are a set of rules about volume and shape, and a specific and dominant function to express.

Funding

SR: Sport England used to assign lottery money, but is that still coming through?

DM: A large part of Sport England’s budget is being directed via Building Schools for the Future, partly as it wants to maximise community use.

AM: There is still lottery money coming through. But if Sport England has money for cricket, for example, it would get channelled through the England & Wales Cricket Board. Football gets funding direct from the Football Foundation.

DM: The commercial world is now funding a great deal of research into sport, and there’s greater linkage with industry and sport. I’m sure we’ll see the day of the Nike Sports Academy, for instance.

AM: Where the funds come from and who’s controlling them becomes increasingly important. So networking will be more important to sport in the future.

As a rugby player, are you plugged into that world in the North-west?

SR: I play sport and I watch it, so I do have a network, but don’t think it’s wide enough to bring in work. But it’s also possible I’m not making the most of it.

Brief and guidelines

SR: The beginning of  a project must see a lot of consultations, analyses, liaison with public bodies. Is that reflected in the fee?

AM: Generally, yes, but I’d also say that our best work comes from that rich dialogue at the beginning, because we’re informed by those sessions, and we’d probably ask for them even if we weren’t told to do them. At the Loughborough National Cricket Academy, their chap said: “If the floor doesn’t work, the lights won’t work, so don’t bother.” You need to discuss the projects to get the details right.

KJ-H: So who provides the brief?

AM: On that particular project, we had the performance director of the England & Wales Cricket Board.

KJ-H: Does Sport England have design guidelines as well, and do they conflict with other design guidelines?

AM: The interpretations might be applied differently.

DM: The National Cricket Academy, which came after the cricket academy we did at Lord’s, caused the design guidelines to be rewritten. We had to disobey their design guidance to make it work. They had written the design guidance around the way these buildings had always been built in the past.

AM: We’re writing design guidelines for bodies who don’t want to do another 20 years of buildings based on the guide-lines they’ve got. So we’re working with the England & Wales Cricket Board on a paper on design. We try to draw on what we’ve done to give others some clues.

Sporting intelligence

SR: Do you you need a real technical knowledge of sports, or just the same intelligence and approach you’d bring to any new building type?

AM: We should be careful how we answer that!

DM: The key thing is to get an under-standing through research and consultation, then put it into practice at the right time. One key thing is the nature of the sports surface. It’s a very complex technical area. In some cases, we’ve employed sub-consultants.

SR: When we did the rugby club, third-generation artificial surfaces were just coming in, so you needed to put some effort into research. But presumably it’s been evolving again.

DM: Yes, and it’s a very global, technical area — you’ve also got to look at what’s happening around the world. There are surfaces that might be trialled in Australia and you need to know about them.

SR: Is mixed use becoming more important?

AM: Absolutely. The Hub is mixed use — it’s a sports building but it’s been used for weddings. So then it becomes more complicated if you’re ventilating a space full of 500 people rather than 36.

KJ-H: Is it complicated to design sports stadiums that are also used for music, because of the acoustics?

DM: Very much so. We’re designing a 10,000-seat tennis stadium in Israel. Tennis is actually very easy to service, but stopping acoustic breakout is the major issue if you also want the building to be naturally ventilated.

Private v public

SR: Is the project profile different depending on whether it’s funded by government or a private organisation such as Lord’s?

DM: The whole procurement process is different, as you don’t have the Ojeu in private work. But dealing with commit-tees happens in both — sports institutions tend to be run by boards. Originally, we were very surprised that somewhere like Lord’s, which you think of as very traditional, was actually quite pioneering. That attitude is reinforced by the fact that many of the competitions are global.

AM: The private sector has a closer handle on what money they’ve got, when they’ve got it, and what they’re going to spend it on. Decision-making is often swifter. And one difference is that you can get automatic repeat work from private clients — but we negotiate hard.

SR: I noticed the shop at Lord’s paid for its construction costs from sales in the first year.

DM: A lot of sports clubs are struggling to make money from these ancillary things — the key to that was getting it open in time for the season.