Richmond Park is a wonderful rolling swathe of open grass and woodland that belies the intensive use it gets from families, walkers, runners, cyclists and golfers. The two existing eighteen hole golf courses fit well with the character of the landscape but the haphazard collection of disparate buildings that make up the clubhouse and related facilities make no connection with the setting and the gentle landscape.

A new driving range and a five hole academy course will be added, and will emphasise the public pay-and play non-exclusive nature of the existing golf courses. 

The two grassy arms of the crescent-shaped clubhouse, will direct golfers to their respective courses as they set out, and then allow them to return on a gentle ramp to the cafe/bar at the end of their round. The arms embrace a pond and practice green, overlooked by the shop and the cafe terrace. In this way the building organises the movement of the golfers in a clear and natural way.

The departure and arrival of the golfers, and the activities on the practice green, become quite theatrical and create a strong sense of place at the heart of the golf course, and a new gateway to one of London’s most impressive Royal Parks.

Richmond Park is the largest Royal Park in London. The informal layout of planted woodland and residual open spaces flow together as a unified ‘natural’ landscape. 

All the buildings within the park are on a scale which reflects their original status and they now form an integral part of the landscape. Our proposal adopted this principal of integration; the building itself would become an element within the landscape. 

The clubhouse was designed as an arcing grass bank locked into the corner of the park at Chohole Gate. The arrival court would be sheltered by the earth banks built up against the lower level of the building.

Once entering, a wide arc of glass would provide open views across the pond and practice green, with the course beyond and Treebox Wood on the horizon. In this way, by firstly denying an outlook of the Park, then revealing expansive views over it, the mass of the building would create a dramatic threshold between the external world of the city, the A3, arrival, parking, and the pastoral inner world of Richmond Park.

The upper level (cafe) would be formed of an ellipsoid roof, made of laminated veneer lumber (LVL) with plywood skins to form an efficient and structurally sound solution for the upper enclosure. The more vertical elements of this roofform would be clad with untreated cedar shingles to weather naturally with time. 

For the more horizontal sections of the roof we proposed an ‘extensive’ green roof with sufficient depth to allow additional ‘plug-planting’ which would create a more interesting planting regime to that of a regular sedum roof. This green roof would also provide additional insulation to the heavily insulated timber roof structure and slow down water run-off.

The roof structure itself would rest on an external concrete retaining wall wrapping the ground floor accommodation. The ground floor walls would be revealed at the entrance where the grass arc is ‘cut’ to announce the entrance. Here we designed a glazed lobby to allow daylight into the entrance and a glimpse through to the pro shop and the golf course beyond.