Background

Antrim GAA is a Gaelic Football Club with a number of playing sites across Antrim in Northern Ireland. Antrim GAA have an overall vision to create a GAA Centre of Participation ‘COP’ at their Dunsilly site. With 3no. GAA grass pitches already constructed the first phase of the COP was to deliver a changing pavilion to provide 4no. new changing rooms, ref changing and disabled facilities and renovate the existing pitches to enable the site to be operational.

Phase 02 will see the development of the next stage of the new Antrim GAA Headquarters. The next stage of the project will include the bulk of the programmatic elements for both the players and County Board Members including County Game changing facilities, Physiotherapy Suite, Gym / Fitness Suite, Additional playing fields,

The site contains a natural basalt tunnel which lead towards the pitches. The position of the building will steer visitors towards the tunnels and the raised position of the viewing gallery will offer views across the pitches.

Approach

The Design was driven by the need to provide a changing room pavilion that could be added to in the future. This first phase would see the construction of 4no changing rooms to accommodate 4 full GAA teams, referees and associated disabled facilities. The site itself is an expansive open field, split along the centre by an existing train line. Our approach was to provide a simply formed pavilion that would allow separate entrances to each side of the building to control the access for players arriving and playing.

As this building was to be a simply formed building we ensured that our detailing was meticulous and provided a subtle relationship to Gaelic Football. For instance the spacing of our timber screen openings, galvanized steel window louvres and steel gate uprights all relate back to the ratio of line spacing on a standard GAA pitch.