Home Farm Holiday Park, Fusion Leisure Centre

Client: Home Farm Holiday Park

Location: Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset

A modern leisure centre was required alongside the existing outdoor swimming pool at Home Farm Holiday Park, one of the largest holiday parks in Somerset. It had to include a large swimming pool and a number of other leisure facilities for use on a day to day basis by large numbers of visitors and private members. Pinelog's design had to sit into an open parkland setting and for planning purposes be sympathetic with surrounding buildings.

The new Fusion Leisure Centre is a timber frame building which externally is in total harmony with the surrounding architecture. It provides 860 square metres of floorspace, over two levels, accommodating a 15m x 13m pool, a children's splash pool with water jets, spa, sauna, steam room, changing facilities, reception with coffee shop and viewing area.

On a mezzanine floor overlooking the pool is a gymnasium, a beauty therapy room and store rooms. The glulam arched roof structure spans wall to wall, producing a dramatic, airy building with excellent natural light. The timber frame and roof are also naturally resistant to the humidity associated with indoor pools.

The new leisure centre was designed to match the other buildings on the park, its exterior walls are clad with white painted block and render, with red brick piers. It has a gabled hipped roof with distinctive red clay tiles.

The park's Managing Director Geoff Atkinson said: "We have never had any regrets about our investment and even though it has only been opened a short while, it is having a marked impact on our bookings - particularly in the quieter periods. The Centre is not exclusively for holiday markers though - to improve the financial return on the facility, we saw the opportunity to develop a private members' club for local residents and had over 300 enquiries before we opened."