Lighting the match

摘要

The National Cricket Academy (NCA) is a workplace, not just for permanent staff but also for the test cricket hopefuls who come here for several months in the winter, interrupted only by a foreign tour around the end of the year. So the blank box that is typical of dry sports centres, ones that are typically used only for short periods, is too stifling an architectural response here. Through Morley's sequence of cricket training facilities at Lords, Edgbaston (Warwickshire) and now at Loughborough, the architect has moved the cricket authorities from a position of reluctance to introduce natural light to making it one of their normal requirements. Daylighting and the views that can go with it make workplace sense. Morley's approach also saves energy. (The necessary environmental conditions were previously achieved by winter training in Australia.)