Achieving Excellence:
Design Engine, the Winchester-based firm
of architects chosen by the College to do the
design work. Jobson grew up in Portsmouth
and Southsea before moving in 1999 to
Winchester, where he still lives. ‘We always
want to serve locally, which is why we had
our eye on Winchester College,’ says Jobson.
Partly to build a relationship with the College,
and partly because he believes passionately in
education, Jobson initially agreed to work with
the Design & Technology staff at Mill giving
architecture talks to Wykehamists. ‘Both the Art
Department and the DT Department are very
progressive in the way they approach the subject,’
he says. ‘They do injection moulding, CAD, 3D
printing — it’s called ‘Design & Make’ today. The
boys can go into design or industrial design, or they
can choose architecture. I found them to be really
impressive — they would always ask great questions,
and in particular have a sort of engineering
mindset about the practical aspects of design.’
The strategy paid off in 2014 when the
then Works Bursar, John Wells, instructed
the firm to put forward ideas for a new sports
complex on the existing site adjacent to KP.
A key element to the planning was to retain
the access provided to the public. There are
currently 3,500 members of the public who
have access to the sports facilities at specific
times, via membership of the Wykeham
Sports Club, external group hire such as
swimming, badminton and rugby clubs and
local schools. The plans had to make sure this
access continued to be offered. It had to be
imaginative. ‘Most sports hall buildings involve
designing just one big shed, and then divvying
up the space inside. I did not think that would
be appropriate for Winchester College, so the
first thing we did was to analyse whether we
could break the building in to its constituent
bits,’ says Jobson.
The new building will have three distinct
halls, with a main entrance that is slightly raised
from ground level. The first hall, housing the
swimming pool, will have plate glass windows
stretching the full length of the building. It will
sit on the site of the old car park, and as a result
you will have spectacular views over KP. The
largest building, sitting adjacent to the pool closer
to Kingsgate Street, will be a double sports hall.
richard jobson
The third hall with fitness and reception will
sit between the two. ‘We broke the site down
into a concept of three separate but linked halls,
bringing in the idea of courtyards and reflection
spaces which is what the College has everywhere
else across its campus,’ says Jobson. Cars will now
enter from Norman Road, the other side of the
complex, making the space safer for boys but also
creating a more coherent whole of the buildings
and playing fields north of Kingsgate Road.
There were some technical issues, of course.
The water table is high around KP, as it is
everywhere across the College, owing to the fact
that it was initially built on reclaimed marshland
(see interview with Mark Sankey elsewhere
in this Journal). Richard and his team created
a clever elevation. The pool was raised half a
metre, so that the working equipment could sit
underneath it without disturbing the water table.
The reception will be reached via some stairs,
giving a stepped view down across the pool and
on to KP. And for boys playing on the pitches,
The Wykeham Journal 2019 39