Sections of wood panelling just over a metre high run around the room at «the ideal height to lean against while viewing cricket or sipping a drink.»
High stools with dark green seats sit along a wooden counter positioned against large windows facing the green. These include glazed windows and doors that slide to one side during matches to decrease the annual cost of replacing broken window panes «as a result of stray cricket balls», and recessed guttering with mesh inserts that «ensure costly cricket balls are not trapped at high level». Three concrete steps leading down onto the pitch provide an informal seating area for spectators. The building is raised on three steps above the playing field and has a waterproof concrete wainscoting up to the windowsill level that aims to prevent the risk of future flooding. The lower floor is given over to a bar and tea room for the public, and changing and physiotherapy rooms for the cricketers. The two blocks, set at an angle to each other, follow the same footprint as their predecessor. An angular black roof rests on the concrete and brick walls of this pavilion that architecture studio TAKA designed for a cricket club in Dublin (+ slideshow). The «home» and «away» changing facilities, with tiled walls and green benches, are positioned in the second part of the building that angles away from the main socialising space of the clubhouse. The roof overhangs a colonnade that surrounds the building to create a viewing terrace. There is also an apartment housed under the large pitched roof structure, creating a home for one club member. «Particular attention has been paid to the area between the bar windows, the viewing terrace and the cricket pitch beyond to allow for multiple, simultaneous viewing opportunities,» said the architects. Under the entrance portico at one end of the building, a concrete bench inlaid with colourful triangular tiles sits on stacks of red brick. «Although the form of the new building appears from certain vantage points to be highly irregular, it is in fact a symmetrical pyramidal volume cut to fit the irregular geometry of the site,» said the architects, whose past projects include a mews house with protruding brickwork. «The delicate diagonally-braced bench supports serve to visually contrast with the heaviness of the concrete structure,» added the architects. The pavilion is equipped with a number of cricket-ball-proofing devices. Green painted benches with zigzagging legs are positioned in the gaps between the concrete columns that support the roof structure. A faceted roof tops the building, which is made up of two simple rectangular volumes.
