The centre provides permanent facilities for local, national and international rowing activities organized by the Royal Albert Dock Trust. The site is located at the North West corner of the Royal Albert Dock adjacent to the finishing line of the newly extended 2000 metre long rowing course, providing London and the southeast of England with its first Olympic standard rowing facility.
In response to the shape of the site it has been conceived and planned as two separate buildings: a Boathouse building and ancillary workshop space of approximately 1150 m2, and a Clubhouse which includes changing rooms, gym, restaurant and bar facilities, and short term residential accommodation for athletes. The Clubhouse also has a unique rowing tank developed from a tenth scale hydraulic model which utilises flowing water to better simulate real open water rowing. The Clubhouse is designed to act as a focus for communal activities in the area and is not intended to be exclusively for club members.
The design strategy responds to the particular scale of the Royal Docks landscape by a visually robust intervention capable of establishing a presence within the distant perspectives characteristic of the area. We structured the design to flank parallel lines of gabion walls - a construction technique more often associated with civil engineering than architecture, but pioneered by our office in France. In this scheme the walls are used to define spaces within which the buildings can nest, creating landscape statements in their own right. In the case of the boathouse, the building is defined only by the free standing gabion walls and a lightweight stiffened catenary stainless steel roof. The clubhouse building sits back from the north-side gabion wall to create an access buffer zone spine running the length of the building. Terraces on the second level sail over the gabion to the south providing viewing areas from the bar and restaurant of racing events and the activities of the London City Airport.
The scheme was completed in late summer 1999.
Arup Journal article by James McLean
2000 RFAC Trust Sports Building of the Year
2000 RIBA Award
2002 Civic Trust Award