Human Performance Centre for Benetton Formula One Team

Client: Benetton Formula One

Location: Oxfordshire

Benetton's Human Performance Centre was to provide a personalised, scientific and comprehensive approach to driver and team training to optimise their performance. It was to be managed by a fitness professional and equipped with state of the art fitness and physiological testing and training machinery.

The Centre was to be sited within a SSSI, so a building that respected the environment and made imaginative use of natural materials was essential if it was to meet strict local planning restrictions.

The building was to include a large open performance studio, testing laboratory, physiotherapy clinic, changing rooms, briefing room and an office.

Using their great diversity of experience, designing similar buildings for environmentally sensitive areas, Pinelog's architects drew up plans, which were for a long, low building finished externally in muted colours. It was to have a low profile roof fitted with roof slates that would merge with the environment. Velux lighting panels, set low down in the roof plane were also proposed. These would provide high levels of light, which would reach every corner of the building and create an effective training environment. Cranked beams allow the possibility of future extensions.

The building as designed, went through all the planning stages unchanged despite the strict restrictions which had been placed upon the designers.

The new highly insulated building is of traditional redwood log construction with Rockwool insulating bats, vapour control layers and an internal split log finish to provide a sandwich walling detail. This form of construction offers the permanence of other methods whilst providing an aesthetically pleasing structure.

Opened by Chief Executive, Rocco Benetton, the new building was an immediate success. "I believe in investing as much in human resources as technical resources to find that competitive edge and the HPC is not only for drivers but the whole team to ensure the highest level of performance from all of us" he said.