Like a Center Parcs for the upwardly mobile, niche developer yoo commissioned architect De Matos Ryan to design the social hub of its 260ha holiday home development on the edge of the Cotswolds, with its Orchard Spa. The building has a 20m pool, play pool, gym, sauna, steam and treatment rooms, and clubrooms for holidaying residents – yoo was keen that they be able to treat is as their own. Using the footprint from an old portal frame shed that used to sit on the site, the firm souped up the industrial typology. The portal frame form remains, but its’ ground level is now fully glazed and its upper level clad in rich Siberian larch. One corner of the glazing retracts fully to the landscape, and basalt tiles run through from inside to the pool’s edge to ground the building in the landscape. Flamed basalt continues in the wet areas, with walls clad in Douglas fir. Above the pool, a stretched fabric ceiling cleanly hides all services, ensuring, as the architect says, ‘the building gets out of the way of the users’.