All change: Sporting facility upgrades

The rise of female participation in organized Aussie Rules football and cricket in the past decade at community and professional levels has seen an increase in demand for changing rooms at sports facilities that were previously the domain of men.¹ This has led to many adverse situations due to inadequate and overcrowded facilities: women have been getting changed on the sidelines, in tents, cars, canteens and loos and even behind bushes. (And so have some men, too.) To meet the gap between the supply and demand of changing facilities – a gap that is exacerbated by the fact that many facilities are designed for the needs of males – local, state and federal tiers of government have been rolling out facility upgrades that emphasize female participation² so that, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison put it, “girls didn’t have to change out the back of the shed.”³

Australian states and territories, along with individual sporting codes, have produced guidelines for upgrades to change facilities and clubs in order to make them “female-friendly.” Their strategies recognize that gender equity can only be achieved with intervention where the aim is to identify, evaluate and refit the spaces of gender inequality in sporting environments. Victoria’s Female Friendly Sport Infrastructure Guidelines highlights that one of several important requirements for these spaces is the provision of unisex changing rooms. In upgrades, this can see the replacement of existing open showers and urinals with lockable shower and toilet cubicles to keep spaces neutral for clubs’ many different users. “Female-friendly” is the armature used for the delivery of unisex changing rooms, but it also shepherds in the provision of generous shower cubicles with benches for people who have cultural and social needs for privacy when getting changed, including gender-diverse teams. Unisex changing rooms can also remove barriers to the participation of transgender and gender-nonconforming sportspeople.⁴

The Hanmer Reserve Pavilion Extension, a 2017 upgrade to Seddon Cricket Club in Melbourne’s western suburbs by Searle x Waldron Architecture, demonstrates how the guidelines take form in a building. Wanting to increase female participation in its Auskick program during winters, the club commissioned Searle x Waldron, with the backing of government funding, for a new pavilion housing female facilities. The industrial-looking new pavilion incorporates two unisex changing rooms separated by large pivot doors (a complement to two existing changing rooms in an adjacent brick building) along with storage. Angled skylights that dramatically open up the space, a signature of Searle x Waldron seen in their Art Gallery of Ballarat Annexe and University of Melbourne End-of-Trip Facilities projects, lets in diffuse light but also addresses the concern from the client stakeholder group around deliberate observation from outside if windows were lower. (One rejected option proposed by the architect included larger, lower windows where views were restricted by exploiting the existing site topography and using operable blinds in order that spaces could be more flexible in their use.)