The huge increase in student numbers over the last 15 years, coupled with the introduction of tuition fees, has driven significant investment in our university facilities.

While much of this has been focused around academic infrastructure, non-academic facilities, such as those for sport, have also benefitted from investment.

Competition on the pitch is being matched by competition off it to attract the best students from home and overseas.

With this in mind, what are the key differentiators for estates directors to consider when planning new facilities?

The traditional benchmark for the quality of a university’s sport offering is the performance of the institution’s teams in BUCS-officiated competitions (British Universities and College Sport) and a high ranking in the all-important league tables.

Ultimately, the key to achieving that is an emphasis on high quality amenities focused around the needs of teams, individual athletes and their training regimes.

As general awareness of health and wellbeing in student life increases, however, it's becoming clear that recreational sport is now of equal importance, especially with the increasing availability of high quality gym facilities in the private sector.

Forging connections
This balance between performance and recreation is coming under increasing scrutiny, with a focus on how they can work together to maximise enrolment.  

At the same time, universities are using sport to forge closer connections between 'town and gown', by working with the towns and cities in which they are based.

Operationally this can be good business practice. Sharing the capital and running costs of swimming pools, for example, can create a win-win situation for both parties.

Ultimately, however, it's the overall student experience which is the key factor.

I recently delivered a paper at the IAKS conference (International Association for Sports and Leisure Facilities) in Cologne, entitled 'the 4th space'. This explored the added value that good design can bring to a project when the tryptic of performance, recreation and community are carefully crafted together with a conceptual '4th space', to deliver something special.

This included a recent example – Den Haag Sport Campus in The Netherlands – where an enlightened client saw the synergies between education and sport, and as a practice we were able to harness that to great effect in our designs.

The brief for the Campus was to create a centre for sport, education and movement. A place where both the Hague University’s Academy of Sport Studies and city residents of all ages could engage in sport and education together in the same place.

The idea of the '4th space' was realised in a spiralling DNA chain concept for the movement of the different user groups through the educational and sporting environments. This concept influenced the final form of the building.

In other contexts the '4th space’ could be a piece of public realm, a social space, or a wider concept where the power of sport is harnessed through facility design to deliver educational or social objectives.

In all instances, architects have an opportunity to work with educational institutions to deliver sports facilities which fully meet the needs of recreational users, elite athletes and the wider community.