60x100 Steel Gymnasium Building

This page is ordered around height and clearance, because at 60x100 the 18-foot eave limits a steel gymnasium sooner than the plan does.

The footprint holds 4 support rooms — 2 across by 2 deep — and leaves 26 feet of depth for a wide equipment store opening directly onto the floor, which is what stops equipment living in the corners.

Read this footprint through its span. 60 feet across is the fixed constraint; 100 feet of length is the negotiable one, and at 1.67 to 1 the building is long for its width, so movement runs front to back. Where the building sits on the site changes how much of this floor is genuinely reachable.

A 60 by 100 footprint is a clearly directional plan: 6,000 sq ft enclosed by 320 ft of wall, at a 1.7:1 length-to-width proportion. Along its 100 ft dimension it takes 3 runs of support rooms at 30 ft, leaving 10 ft over — the 10 ft is where the argument about this size actually happens. Taken purely as arithmetic, 60 by 100 gives 2 support rooms across the 60 ft dimension once 14 ft is reserved for movement, and 3 deep along the 100 ft dimension. Run as a an activity floor with a support wing of changing, storage and staff rooms, 2 ft across is below the 11 ft this use needs to be worth planning, so the store is too shallow to hold what the floor generates, so equipment stays out and the floor edge becomes storage Perimeter clearance is unusable floor by design, and treating it as spare space defeats it.

At 60x100 the operating question is a specific one: how much of the footprint should be given to rooms that make the floor usable rather than to the floor itself? That is a different question from the one a steel gymnasium of another shape has to answer, and it is why this footprint is planned as an activity floor with a support wing of changing, storage and staff rooms rather than as generic covered area.

Across a 60-foot span the 3:12 pitch adds 7.5 feet between eave and ridge. The centreline measures 25.5 feet; anything parked or stacked near a wall lives with the 18-foot eave. Judge the plan by what has to happen on the worst day of the year, not on an average one.

Height on a 60 ft span is a separate decision from the 100 ft length, and it is the span that sets the frame's behavior. Raising the eave over 6,000 sq ft affects every bay along the 100 ft dimension, so the test is whether support wing planning genuinely needs the extra clear height or only the floor area.

Ventilation across 6,000 square feet at this height: an intensively occupied volume with high activity levels, where air handling is planned for the occupied peak.

The activity pattern this floor could equally be planned around is a practice floor kept clear for training rather than for fixtures: there is no perimeter strip, so bags and equipment sit on the playing surface and the usable floor shrinks by more than the strip would have cost. The wing takes one end and the floor takes the rest, with the store placed where equipment is used rather than where the plan had space left. Support rooms distributed around the perimeter cost more wall than they are worth.

Depth arithmetic leaves a working end zone here. 1,560 square feet sits past the last row, which is why 60x100 tends to be planned with a wide equipment store opening directly onto the floor, which is what stops equipment living in the corners designed in rather than added later. Snow, wind and site exposure change what this shape costs to build long before the interior plan does.

Spare width is the more valuable of the two leftovers here: a continuous 16-foot strip beats the same area stranded at the end of the run, because it touches every position along the way. Fire separation, egress and occupancy are determined for the specific building and can reshape this plan entirely.

Participants arrive, change, use the floor and reverse the sequence, so the wing is used twice per session by everyone. A route that passes through the activity area between those two steps is what makes a timetable slip. Equipment storage adjacent to the floor is the provision most often reduced and most often regretted. That movement pattern, not the 6,000-square-foot total, is what decides whether the leftover 26 feet is useful here.

One opening per position works on this gable: 2 across 60 feet, with 16 feet of wall to distribute as piers. Splitting that margin evenly is what keeps the elevation buildable. Rows that cannot be entered independently end up used as one long space.

The 60 ft ends and the 100 ft sides offer very different opening budgets: 60 ft of end wall has room for one wide opening or two modest ones, while 100 ft of side wall can carry several without the openings competing. On this plan the deciding factor is whether support wing planning or equipment store sizing should be the first thing reached from the door.

Nominal bay division computes to 4 bays at about 25 feet, wider than the 22-foot module — so a position can sit inside a bay without a frame line splitting it. The mezzanine that is added afterwards is the change order that reprices the frame.

With 2 rows deep, the rear row is behind the front one. Without a route past it, those support rooms become storage positions rather than working ones — the real cost of depth at this width. Storage expands until it meets a wall, so give it a wall on purpose.

Support wings extend end-on. Adding rooms in the middle of a wing means cutting its corridor, so draw the corridor to a continuable length.

Configured as an activity floor with a support wing of changing, storage and staff rooms, 60x100 is judged on whether the 4 support rooms it holds match the operation, and on whether the 16 feet of spare width leaves the route this mode depends on.

• Does the work need four lanes across, or two lanes flanking an interior work hall, or does it need a second lane that this 60-foot span cannot give?
• Is the 100-foot length being bought for depth, or for the repeated bays — eight to ten repeated bays, which makes the layout a scheduling problem as much as a spatial one?
• What clear height does the activity need, measured to the lowest obstruction?
• Are the run-off margins protected from storage and seating?

• 30x80 moves the count from 4 to 2 support rooms (1 across by 2 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.
• 40x60 moves the count from 4 to 1 support rooms (1 across by 1 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.
• 50x50 moves the count from 4 to 1 support rooms (1 across by 1 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.

Because this footprint is planned as an activity floor with a support wing of changing, storage and staff rooms, the useful next reads are different from the ones a differently shaped steel gymnasium suggests: support wing planning, equipment store sizing, changing room planning.

Quantities, not prices, are publishable here: roof cladding runs 6,185 square feet — 3% above the 6,000-square-foot floor at a 3:12 pitch — with 111.1 cubic yards of nominal slab beneath it. Circulation width is the first thing surrendered under pressure and the first thing missed afterwards.

Changing rooms carry plumbing, drainage, ventilation and finishes, and per square foot they are the most expensive part of the building by a wide margin.

• clear height above the playing surface
• the clear span across the court and its run-off
• the support wing with changing rooms
• impact-resistant lighting and interior surfaces