JAGS Swimming Pool
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The easterly corner
Charlotte Wood Download Original
Light, simple, modern swimming pool at James Allen’s Girls School in East Dulwich, London
The building is formed by an arched, standing-seam roofed enclosure, with a low roof sweep carefully designed to avoid any roof penetrations.
Inside, the 25m six-lane competition pool hall is edged with glazed walls at one end and one side. At the opposite (shallow) end are changing rooms, and along the other side are 200 fixed seats. The pool surrounds are deep to accommodate the large number of students that can be involved in inter-school competitions.
Outside the pool hall, admin space is partly tucked under the seating, with a corridor connecting the entrance to the adjacent sports hall. Attached to the building is a rotunda containing plant, with future plans for a tennis pavilion on the roof.
The pool hall has been an exercise in designing with light. Not just the quality of the white hard-surface finishing materials, the glistening water and the walls of daylight, but also the choice of bands of stretched fabric as the ceiling.
Data
- Begun: Feb 2000
- Completed: 2001
- Floor area: 1,494m2
- Sectors: Education, Sports and leisure
- Total cost: £4.1M
- Tender date: Nov 1999
- Procurement: JCT IFC 98 with Quantities
- Address: 144 East Dulwich Grove, London, SE22 8TE, United Kingdom
Professional Team 
- Architect: Graham-Watts Partnership
- Client: James Allen's Girls School
- Structural engineer: Carter Clack Partnership
- Services engineer: Silcock Dawson & Partners
- Quantity surveyor: Currie & Brown
- Landscape design : Graham-Watts Partnership
- Main contractor: Bensons
Suppliers
- Louvres, sunscreens: Corus
- Frameless glazing: Ide Contracting
- Terrazzo viewing gallery: Quiligotti Terrazzo
- Pool filtration: Aqua Process Engineering