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White Rose Performance Institute
Illustrative render of the proposed women’s gym floor beneath a dark ceiling with violet cove lighting

Ground floor

The Women’s Gym

A women’s performance gym of approximately 200 stations, designed around how women and girls actually want to train — with the space, sightlines and support that ordinary commercial gyms rarely provide.

The training floor

Space to train properly

Most gym floors are laid out to maximise membership per square metre. This one is laid out to make training comfortable, unhurried and repeatable.

The women’s gym is proposed as the commercial and social anchor of the ground floor: a single large hall of roughly 200 training stations, kept single-sex throughout so that members can train without negotiating for space or attention.

Cardio, resistance, free-weight and stretch zones are separated rather than compressed into one room. Circulation is generous, sightlines are clear from the entrance, and the fit-out follows the same matte black, oak and violet palette used across the building.

Because physiotherapy, recovery and the changing suite sit on the same floor, a member can move from a session to treatment or contrast bathing without leaving the ground level or booking elsewhere.

What is proposed

  • Approximately 200 training stations
  • Cardio, resistance, free-weight and stretch zones
  • Single-sex training environment for women and girls
  • Direct access to changing, recovery and physiotherapy
  • Crèche provision so childcare is not a barrier to training
Illustrative render of the proposed women’s gym showing separated cardio and resistance zones

Removing the barriers

Why women stop training — and what the building does about it

Participation research consistently points to the same obstacles: childcare, feeling watched, poor changing provision and travelling too far. Each has an architectural answer.

Illustrative render of the proposed crèche and family room with soft play and doors onto a secure garden

Childcare as infrastructure

A crèche with a secure, overlooked garden sits alongside the public frontage, with gym-and-crèche membership packages proposed so that training and childcare are booked together rather than juggled.

Illustrative render of the proposed changing rooms with individual timber cubicles and secure storage

Changing that people will use

Individual cubicles, secure storage, drying provision and separate athlete and community changing, specified to squad standard rather than to the minimum a leisure centre can get away with.

Interested in the membership model?

The prospectus sets out how the women’s gym, recovery suite and crèche are intended to work together commercially, and how membership sits alongside the academy and community programmes.

Download the prospectusRegister your interest

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