Recreation centre and tenants' hall, including baths, gymnasium and nursery

Recreation centre and tenants' hall, including baths, gymnasium and nursery

This recreation centre was built between 1958 and 1962 as part of the Golden Lane Estate, following a competition design won in 1951 by Geoffry Powell and developed by the architectural practice Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, with Ove Arup and Partners as engineers.

The building comprises a reinforced concrete tenants' hall with a steel-framed swimming pool and badminton court. The pool is constructed with brick cladding, while the court features large areas of glass. The structure has a flat asphalt roof and an L-shaped plan set partly at basement level. The tenants' hall rises to one storey and is defined by grey brick piers supporting reinforced concrete bush-hammered arches that create an arcade pattern. Above the hall is a rooftop children's playground, with a grey brick nursery at ground floor level positioned over the entrance to the recreation centre at the junction of the two wings.

The two-storey pool hall and badminton court are separated at both levels by walks running through the building, with additional walkways on either side at upper ground level. These walkways are supported on painted posts or pilotis with painted roofs, also of concrete. The tenants' hall is glazed between its brick piers with timber windows. The swimming pool is fully glazed on three sides with metal glazing frames, and features concrete walkways alongside. The gymnasium and badminton court are similarly treated, although much of their glazing is now opaque, with timber flooring.

The concrete roof of the tenants' hall is elaborately laid out as a children's playground, featuring a long bench, walls, and a sunken circular playground accessible either by slide or by a gate set at the level of the Hatfield House gardens below.

The recreation centre is a distinctive element within the Golden Lane design, physically and stylistically mediating between the original part of the estate and later blocks to the north-west. The tenants' hall exemplifies the round-arched bush-hammered concrete language seen at Crescent House and later developed at the Barbican. The manipulation of different levels is fundamental to Chamberlin, Powell and Bon's approach at Golden Lane, where deep basements left by previous buildings on the site were naturally integrated in response to the City's 1951 competition brief. The result is a formal geometric grid of courtyards and buildings, interrupted only by the circular children's playground, which remains rigorously ordered. Every available space is geometrically organised for a specific purpose.

The recreation centre represents Chamberlin, Powell and Bon's conviction that a housing development should extend beyond mere accommodation to function as a genuine part of the city, providing facilities for both residents and the wider public. This approach anticipated the addition of cultural facilities at the Barbican.