Strawberry fields forever

In 1992, the All England club appointed Building Design Partnership to prepare a masterplan for the south London site, to be implemented in three stages. The first phase is complete, stage two will be finished next June and the third part is still to be finalised. The brief was to create a venue with a relaxed character under the theme “tennis in an English garden”.

Now, with this year’s tournament over, the contractors are back on site trying to finish the second stage in time for next year.

For Martin Jones, BDP’s landscape architect, the challenge was particularly tough. It was his job to create an English garden that could accommodate the 30 000 visitors a day that flood the championships, as well as to add two extra courts to the cramped site.

Jones, along with Richard Rees, BDP’s masterplan team leader, planned the site as a “country house in its garden”. According to Jones, “Centre Court is ‘the big house’, with the smaller courts its outbuildings and the outer courts the formal gardens.” The initial challenge was to identify the elements that give Wimbledon its unique character, combine them with other elements of an English garden and incorporate them into the masterplan. “The first images that come to mind are those of closely mown lawns, creeper-clad buildings and distant views of neighbouring St Mary’s Church,” says Jones. “Similarly, the formal layout of the southern courts, with their enclosing yew hedges and distant views of city landmarks, all form a sense of place.” These elements became essential to the site’s redevelopment.

The formal layout of Centre Court was set within a ladder-like matrix of perpendicular pathways, which, says Jones, “form design axes and have been used to order the landscape”. The major circulation axis runs roughly north-south across the site, giving views of St Mary’s to the south from the oak tree on top of Aorangi Hill, the site’s highest point, at the northern perimeter.

Stage one of the masterplan was to build the new No 1 Court on Aorangi Park. Other work carried out in this stage included the creation of a new broadcast centre, two new outer show-courts and an underground service road running north-south beneath the site, the realignment of the outer courts to improve circulation, and landscaping to link all the elements to Centre Court.

Construction work began on No 1 Court after the 1994 championship finished. BDP reduced the court’s impact by cutting it into the side of Aorangi Hill to ensure it did not upstage Centre Court’s “big-house status”.

A huge undercroft connects No 1 Court to the underground service road and includes a service yard for 15 vehicles, allowing deliveries to be made to the site 24 hours a day. Several underground buggy routes were also constructed to connect the site’s main buildings, allowing the tournament’s stars to travel from match to match without having to run the gauntlet of autograph hunters.

But the hill had to be stabilised before excavations could begin. A technique known as soil nailing – the insertion of a small diameter piles into the ground at a shallow angle – was used. When a number of these piles are inserted on a grid, friction is increased and slippage becomes less likely. To eliminate any chance of soil movement, more than 700 soil nails were used.

The excavations for the court involved removing more than 100 000 m3 of clay. More than 1000 piles were then sunk – compression piles to support the structure and tension piles to hold the building down and eliminate ground heave. Additional piles act as a retaining wall to the court and as walls for the 400 m subterranean service tunnel linking Church Road with Somerset Road and the broadcast centre. The court was completed in time for the 1997 championships. Building on the character of Centre Court, climbing and trailing plants were introduced to “soften the elevations” of No 1 Court and associated retaining walls.

The landscape next to No 1 Court was designed to have a “more relaxed geometry, responding to the more fluid forms of the hillside and the curve of the court”, says Jones. The design exploited the excavations for the new court by sculpting the hillside to form a series of sweeping grass banks and terraces, providing an ideal picnic spot.

The terraces, first used at the 1997 championships, form a natural amphitheatre and focus on a large outdoor video screen that shows play in progress. Immediately popular with visitors, the sheer numbers on the terraces caused Jones some concern, given the amount of rain at 1997’s tournament and the worries about the hill’s stability. His concerns proved unfounded, and the terrace has become one of the most popular areas.

To strengthen the traditional English garden analogy, BDP created a folly on top of Aorangi Hill and introduced a water feature. This started life as a gazebo, evolved into a ruined aqueduct and ended up as a pergola at the foot of the oak tree, enhanced by a canal of reflective water at its base. A cascade of water flows from the pergola to form a stream running beside the main circulation axis.

Having buried No 1 Court, BDP used the same technique with the broadcast centre, which was built during the later stages of the construction of No 1 Court ready for the 1997 championships. But, because the centre is cut into the hillside, the architect has chosen to “flow” the uppermost terrace of the hillside over its roof to provide a vantage point for the new show court, Court 18, and create a private garden terrace for broadcasters.

Stage two is now well under way. The old No 1 Court has been levelled, apart from the players’ changing areas, which had to be kept for this year’s championship, and 700 seats have been added to Centre Court. As soon as this year’s championship ended, Try started work on the superstructure, to ensure the building is ready for next year.

Phase three is still being finalised and has not yet won planning permission, but it will involve repositioning the southern end of the site. Jones is confident that the landscaping for this will be as well received as the rest.