Buildings interspersed with gardens gave the city’s 1970s Sport and Recreation Centre room to move and grow
In the 1970s the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Interior’s Department of Municipal Affairs undertook a comprehensive programme of planning for the country at regional, city and local scales. Robert Matthew Johnson-Marshall & Partners (RMJM) was appointed overall planner and other British architects received commissions for projects across the country, as illustrated in the June 1976 issue of the RIBA Journal under the headline ‘Building for Islam’. One of these projects was the Sport and Recreation Centre in Jeddah by Slater, Hodnett & Partners. One requirement for the scheme was flexibility, so that extensions and additions could be carried out in the future. Therefore the centre, laid out along the Red Sea waterfront, consisted of buildings with different functions linked by garden courts and covered pedestrian arcades, whose vaulted canopies in glass-reinforced cement were supported by painted steel frames. A distinctive feature of the centre was the control tower with its tall central column, conical roof and spiral staircase – pronounced a ‘striking piece of precast concrete design’ by Concrete Quarterly.