How to design a modern tennis clubhouse: inside RISE's new pavilion for Sutton Churches

Every clubhouse starts as a conversation before it starts as a drawing. At Sutton Churches Tennis Club, that conversation began with a straightforward question: what does a tennis club actually need from its building today?

It's a question a lot of UK clubs are facing at once. Membership is growing, the buildings are ageing, and members expect more in the way of comfort and lower running costs. A pavilion now has to do more than sit by the courts as a hut for rackets and tea. This piece is about how the design for Sutton Churches has developed, and what some of that thinking might offer a club planning its own new clubhouse.

Work-in-progress view of the new clubhouse terrace, shaped by a single sweeping roof that opens directly onto the courts.

Listening first

Before we drew anything, we sat down with players, committee members and volunteers. The same picture came back from all of them: the existing pavilion was well loved but no longer fit for purpose.

What they wanted was consistent. A bigger social space that could hold the club's life rather than squeezing it. A building that works through the year, not just in summer. Better views of the courts from inside. Proper accessibility. And, repeatedly, a building that's low-energy and cheap to run, because energy bills have become a real pressure on clubs. Those conversations shaped every sketch that followed.

From sketch to strategy

The first designs were deliberately loose, testing forms that could feel settled on the site while still being generous where it counted. The shift came when we turned the usual logic around. Instead of designing the building at the boundary and looking back, we designed it from the courts outward, so the clubhouse became a long, calm viewing edge with a roof that shelters and a soft threshold between playing and socialising.

That settled into three ideas that then guided everything. The first is a single sweeping roof, which gives the building a clear identity without overpowering the site. The second is a social terrace that works in all seasons, with tables under the eaves and views to the courts, so it feels used even on a quiet midweek afternoon. The third is a low-energy, timber-focused build, which keeps embodied carbon down and the pavilion comfortable on very little energy.

Why we use "white-card" renders

The images here show the design at an early stage, stripped of colour, texture and detail. That's deliberate. At this point the form and the light are what matter, and taking the finishes away lets us test proportion, shading and the feel of a space before any material decisions are fixed.

White-card models let a club read the things that actually affect how the building gets used: the views from the courts, where the glazing sits, the size and feel of the terrace, how people will naturally gather, and how daylight reaches into the plan. Clubs often tell us these plain images help them picture how members will use the space, which is more useful at this stage than a photorealistic view of a building that might still change.

Designing for real club life

A good clubhouse is less about architecture than about people, and we shaped this one around the rhythm of an ordinary day at the club: junior camps in the morning, league matches in the afternoon, social tennis in the evening, parents watching from the terrace, and members grabbing a coffee between sets.

That's why the main social room runs the length of the courts behind uninterrupted glazing, why the roof overhang is deep enough to sit out under in the rain, and why the interior is kept simple, warm and adaptable. A tennis club changes character every couple of hours, and the building has to flex with it.

What makes a low-energy tennis pavilion

Energy costs for clubs have risen sharply, so a low-energy clubhouse is now a practical necessity rather than a nice-to-have. The strategy developing for Sutton Churches rests on a few coordinated moves rather than any single piece of kit.

The structure is cross-laminated timber, which keeps embodied carbon low, is structurally efficient and gives a warm interior. High-performance glazing with solar shading brings in daylight without letting the building overheat in summer. MVHR supplies fresh, filtered air while recovering most of the heat that would otherwise be lost. An air-source heat pump handles heating and cooling efficiently. And a highly insulated, airtight envelope keeps the building comfortable year-round, including during winter tournaments. Together, measures like these would typically cut operational energy by somewhere in the region of 60 to 75 percent against a standard build.

Inside the clubroom

The biggest change happens inside. Early tests showed that a vaulted ceiling with a long rooflight makes a bright, uplifting room that does several jobs: an everyday gathering space, a venue for events, a base for parents during junior tournaments, and a hall the wider community can use out of season. Inside and outside blend, so you stay connected to the courts even when you're not playing.

A pavilion built to last

Good clubhouse design isn't aimed at the next season, it's aimed at the next few decades. We think about longevity in fairly concrete terms: how durable the building is, how little maintenance it needs, how it performs on energy, how much use the club gets out of it, and whether it's a building people are glad to walk into. Get those right and the pavilion becomes the centre of gravity for the club, somewhere members are proud of and visitors remember.

The design is still developing, and these work-in-progress visuals capture where it has got to. If your club is at the early thinking stage, or just wants to see what a low-energy approach makes possible, we'd be glad to share what we've learned at Sutton Churches and on other sports projects, and to talk it through.

→ Email us at architects@risedesignstudio.co.uk
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