80x150 Steel Gymnasium Building

This page is ordered around the working arrangement, because the 150-foot depth at 80x150 is what gives a steel gymnasium its usable sequence of zones.

The footprint holds 6 divided bays — 2 across by 3 deep — and leaves 14 feet of depth for a cross-aisle at one end so a group can reach its own bay without crossing another one in use.

What distinguishes 80x150 is depth behaviour: 3 rows along 150 feet after 16 feet of circulation, with 14 feet unaccounted for at the end of the run. Service routes are cheap to plan now and expensive to retrofit through a finished shell.

A 80 by 150 footprint is a clearly directional plan: 12,000 sq ft enclosed by 460 ft of wall, at a 1.9:1 length-to-width proportion. Along its 150 ft dimension it takes 3 runs of divided bays at 40 ft, leaving 30 ft over — the 30 ft is where the argument about this size actually happens. Taken purely as arithmetic, 80 by 150 gives 2 divided bays across the 80 ft dimension once 16 ft is reserved for movement, and 3 deep along the 150 ft dimension. Run as a a divisible floor carrying more than one activity at once, 4 ft across is below the 12 ft this use needs to be worth planning, so there is no cross-aisle, so late arrivals walk through whichever activity is nearest the door Court and run-off dimensions for a given activity are set by the governing body concerned and confirmed for the specific building.

At 80x150 the operating question is a specific one: how are two or three simultaneous activities separated without any of them losing usable width? 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 a divisible floor carrying more than one activity at once rather than as generic covered area.

The columns win at this footprint: 25-foot nominal bays against a 30-foot module means every layout decision starts from where the frames fall. A building that cannot be reversed out of is a building that gets used in one direction only.

With 3 rows deep, the rear row is behind the front one. Without a route past it, those divided bays become storage positions rather than working ones — the real cost of depth at this width. Noise from this floor reaches the office, the neighbours and the yard, and separation is a plan decision.

Growth adds a bay in the direction of division. Extending in the other direction lengthens every bay instead of adding one, which is rarely what was wanted.

Configured as a divisible floor carrying more than one activity at once, 80x150 is judged on whether the 6 divided bays it holds match the operation, and on whether the 20 feet of spare width leaves the route this mode depends on.

• Does the work need racking or work zones on both sides with a full vehicle lane down the middle, or does it need a second lane that this 80-foot span cannot give?
• Is the 150-foot length being bought for depth, or for the repeated bays — a long repeating bay sequence, so segment boundaries are set by bay lines rather than by walls?
• What clear height does the activity need, measured to the lowest obstruction?
• Are the run-off margins protected from storage and seating?

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. Dividing the 12,000 sq ft by the 30 by 40 ft divided bay gives roughly 6 positions before circulation is deducted a second time for cross movement. Whether the plan keeps 6 or drops to 3 comes back to the question this footprint is really answering: how are two or three simultaneous activities separated without any of them losing usable width?

The 14-foot leftover depth is 1,120 square feet across the full width — deep enough to plan deliberately, and at this footprint it goes to a cross-aisle at one end so a group can reach its own bay without crossing another one in use. Every foot of width added multiplies through the roof and the frame; every foot of length mostly adds skin.

The 20 feet of spare width runs the whole 150-foot length — 3,000 square feet of wall strip. It earns its keep as shelving, staging or a walking route, not as another divided bay. Cleaning, maintenance and inspection all need reach, and reach is planned in the gaps rather than in the modules.

Several timetables run in parallel and change over at different times, so movement into and out of the building is continuous rather than concentrated. Access to each bay from a shared edge is the whole design question. Heating a tall clear volume is an operating decision made at the envelope stage. That movement pattern, not the 12,000-square-foot total, is what decides whether the leftover 14 feet is useful here.

Span drives headroom at 80x150: 80 feet of width on a 4:12 pitch puts 37.3 feet over the middle and 24 feet at the walls, so where a tall item stands matters as much as how tall it is. Temperature swing on a steel shell drives condensation decisions that outrank most layout preferences.

Height on a 80 ft span is a separate decision from the 150 ft length, and it is the span that sets the frame's behavior. Raising the eave over 12,000 sq ft affects every bay along the 150 ft dimension, so the test is whether divisible sports floor planning genuinely needs the extra clear height or only the floor area.

Ventilation across 12,000 square feet at this height: an intensively occupied volume with high activity levels, where air handling is planned for the occupied peak.

The 80-foot gable can carry 2 openings, one per divided bay, with 20 feet of wall left for piers between and beside them — the arrangement that keeps each position independently reachable. The count of working positions, not the headline area, is the figure that survives contact with the operation.

Each bay wants reachable entry from the shared route, and one wide opening still handles equipment for all of them. Where every bay has its own external door, the perimeter loses the wall the activity needed.

No price appears on this page. The quantities that scale an estimate at 80x150 are 12,000 square feet of slab, 222.2 cubic yards of nominal concrete, 11,040 square feet of wall cladding and 12,649 square feet of roof cladding. Access, not area, is what makes a plan feel small once it is in use.

Dividing equipment, its structural support and the controls for it are the cost distinguishing this from an open floor, and they are frame-dependent rather than a later addition.

• 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

• 60x80 moves the count from 6 to 4 divided bays (2 across by 2 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.
• 40x120 moves the count from 6 to 3 divided bays (1 across by 3 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.
• 50x100 moves the count from 6 to 2 divided bays (1 across by 2 deep), which is the reason to choose between them.

Because this footprint is planned as a divisible floor carrying more than one activity at once, the useful next reads are different from the ones a differently shaped steel gymnasium suggests: divisible sports floor planning, activity bay separation, shared access routes.