Tales from the sheds: a new dawn
Out with nostalgia and in with modernity. How new facilities are designing changing rooms for the 21st century.
Whether in preparation for major games, creating new centres of excellence, or refurbishing old community facilities, designing changing rooms that meet the needs of sport in the 21st century requires more than communal showers and bench seating.
Clients and design teams will wrestle with questions like, how big do the sheds need to be, do they need to be unisex, should they include lockers, and what are the facilities athletes need easy access to after getting changed? This may be slightly easier when designing facilities in a modern centre of excellence that is used by a single team but harder in facilities that cater for multi team and multi-sport environments.
Having worked with architects and design teams to deliver sporting infrastructure in the UK and Australia I have spent more time than most considering the components that coalesce to form an effective changing room. I’ll share those thoughts here.
How big do the sheds need to be?
Despite the purported need for more changing rooms, in most facilities, they represent a sunk cost. The amount of time they are used pales in comparison to the cost of constructing them. The sheds are generally somewhere players dump their bags, store belongings and perhaps (but not always) shower after training. Their usage is transient and has little direct impact on performance, quite different from, say a gym, recovery pool, or cafeteria. So how do you make these spaces work as hard as possible, extracting greater utility from construction costs?
A changing room of roughly 60 sqm can easily accommodate 20-25 people, communal lockers, clothes hooks, bench seating, toilets and showers. A space like this is big enough for most team sports and can be used by the public when required to maximise its utility.
By including unisex toilet facilities these spaces can cater for both sexes, important for facilities that are intended for use by team sports who have both male and female squads. Changing rooms designed for professional teams may need to be larger. The sheds within Scotland’s national performance centre (Oriam) number three in total, each 90 sqm in size. When the Scotland Rugby team train in the facility they use all three areas to accomodate the players and coaches however each changing room is ample for a match day squad (generally smaller than a training squad).
The changing rooms at the Scottish performance centre were designed in 2013 and opened in 2016, a time when open plan showers were still considered acceptable. Newer facilities however, have opted for private showers with individual stalls. This is a welcome move in terms of privacy and a positive step toward inclusivity; a lack of private changing and showering facilities has been cited as an impediment to participation in sport by some groups. This design approach however, increases the footprint of the wet area and as a result, the cost to construct them. Newer facilities intended to service professional teams are building changing rooms upwards of 110 sqm. The increase in size in part explained by the need for larger wet areas that accommodate private stalls. Whether this represents value for money is a different question, especially when most buildings will cost upwards of $4500 per sqm to construct. For community facilities, a changing room could be as small as 30 sqm if only used transiently and bathrooms are shared with the general public and/or an adjacent changing room which serves a similar purpose. Bijou, but no less effective.
The removal of open plan showers brings other challenges aside from adding to the cost of construction. Old changing rooms have accommodated the growing professionalism of sport by utilising open plan shower areas for plinths, strapping, and medical treatment. Future changing rooms will need to accommodate the provision of medical services in a different way. Even at the grassroots level, regulations around assessing and treating players with concussion require a space where players can receive medical attention in or near the changing rooms. To extract greater utility from medical areas they can double as a space for doping control, provide a small office for coaches, or an area where officials can get changed. Accommodating the officials (as well as the teams) is often overlooked in many new facilities,
New and refurbished facilities should also consider the need for greater accessibility, reflecting the move by sports to create inclusive formats of their codes. This means including toilets, showers and seating that is accessible for those in a wheelchair. A quiet room is a valuable addition to cater for those who are neurodiverse. The changing rooms may not seem like the right place for a quiet room however, community infrastructure may not have enough space to include it elsewhere. You may also consider a changing places facility which is equipped with a ceiling hoist and adjustable plinth as well as an accessible shower and toilet. For changing rooms that service indoor courts changing place facilities are crucial in ensuring you can attract the full range of sports that use these facilities. The inclusion of a family or feeding room may also be worthwhile as sports seek to align with modern employment law and provide the ability for mums and dads to come back to work for ‘keeping in touch days’ or to take shared paternity leave.
Where are the sheds?
In community facilities the key adjacency for changing rooms is the field (or court) of play. Ideally, athletes will be able to access the area in which training and competition is hosted directly from the changing room. This has a number of benefits, not least reducing the cleaning cost for the operator. The further athletes have to walk with muddy boots the more cleaning is required. It also reduces the transit time for injured athletes who need to be moved from the field of play and into the sheds, often on a stretcher (remember to make the doors along this route extra wide!). The design team should give consideration to the type of flooring used in this area. It needs to be hard wearing enough so that it doesn’t get marked by spikes or studs whilst not becoming slippery in adverse weather conditions or when water is spilled (as it invariably will be).
When designing bespoke changing rooms, for example, within high performance training facilities, other key adjacencies should be considered. Ideally the changing room will be in close proximity to the kit room. The perfect sequence allows athletes to enter the building, retrieve their training kit for the day before moving seamlessly into the sheds. This also makes life easier for kit managers who have to retrieve items from the sheds at the end of the day. If the facility has a recovery pool this will need to have a direct link to the changing room so that water is not trailed through dry areas. It is also useful if there are desire lines between the changing room and areas such as the gym and medical area, along with other spaces a club may want to encourage athletes to spend time in. Well designed training centres are exemplars in nudge theory. They remove barriers and create key adjacencies between facilities they want athletes to spend time in. If athletes must navigate a circuitous route from the changing room to the gym and back again, it is likely that at least some will not make the trip!
What else do I need?
Modern changing rooms take heed of contemporary trends in sport.
The inclusion of zip taps, fridges and an area where supplements and equipment can be prepared is worth considering. These types of spaces, if designed well, allow staff to operate outside of the main changing area, providing athletes and coaches with more room to move, not to mention privacy. Most teams will employ staff of a different sex to the athletes they work with and so providing a space in which they can undertake key duties whilst maintaining professional boundaries is essential. The changing rooms at the national performance centre for sport in Scotland are a great example of this and credit goes to the architect, Reiach and Hall.
Changing rooms should also provision cabling and infrastructure that allow video footage from the field of play to be shown to the athletes before, during and after their training session or match. This may include cabling that connects fixed cameras for indoor sports like Basketball and Volleyball or the ability to share video collected from roaming outdoor cameras for sports like Football (Soccer) and Rugby. Performance analysis is now a central part of all sports and changing rooms need to provision the technology that allows clubs to adopt and realise its benefits.
The design of the changing room is also important in facilitating effective communication between the coach and athletes. Square spaces make the ability to stand (or sit) in one location and be seen by everyone a challenge. Changing rooms arranged in a semi-circle solve this problem, albeit by taking up a larger footprint for the same number of seats. Whatever solution you arrive at, the design needs to be somewhere that enhances rather than inhibits effective communication.
It is commonplace for teams to want to personalise their changing rooms and include graphics that depict the individual athletes, club logos, and colours. Whist these design features have a big impact on the aesthetic of the space, being able to leave them in situ permanently is likely reserved for clubs who have their own training facility. This is a luxury reserved for the few, not the many. Most projects will need to find a way to incorporate these design elements using a temporary solution.
Fixed joinery can be designed and built in a such a way that allows temporary banners to be affixed to it. Finishes can be selected that allow decals to be stuck to them and removed without leaving marks or damaging the surface. Benches can be designed with fixations that allow cushions to be used and removed for teams who want to make the changing room more comfortable (it also allows you to specify a cheaper bench seating for more general use). Power point and USB ports can be included so that athletes are able to charge their device. Although these elements represent extra cost, they can also serve as cost saving strategies if they allow a changing room to be used by adult athletes during the day and youth athletes of an evening, or by different sports at different times of the year.
Modern day changing rooms are anything but ‘sheds’. Gone are the corrugated roofs that accentuate the sound of rainfall and draughty walls that make them colder than the outside temperature. They should be spaces that are welcoming of everyone who wants to benefit from participating in sport and extract the greatest value from their construction and design cost. Anyone designing a new facility who treats the changing rooms as an after thought does so at their own peril.