The building, a triple multi-sports hall, is the result of a competition won by Barcelona City Council, carried out in collaboration with BB arquitectes and Gustavo Gili.
The large volume that the extensive functional program generates in relation to the reduced size of the site and the density of nearby buildings proposes to semi-underground an important part of the sports complex, ensuring, through section mechanisms, good lighting and natural ventilation as well as convenient access/evacuation to the lower parts.
With this semi-underground, apart from reducing the visual impact considerably and obtaining important energy gains thanks to reducing its exposed surfaces, a gain is obtained in the urban public space. By withdrawing the building from the road alignment, a free cushion is guaranteed that resolves the access as well as the complicated urban plot at this point. A free public space is generated that acts as the urban foyer of the complex and significantly improves the integration of the building in its immediate environment, moving the outside of the square to the inside of the stands on the main court.
The proposed construction system is born from the recovery of the memory of local construction traditions based on ceramics from the beginning of the 20th century. We therefore link a craft tradition with a post-industrial attitude by proposing systems based on industrialised ceramics. A building designed for use, where the materials are shown as they are, contributing sensorial qualities by themselves. They are the same materials that are repeated in all the spaces of the complex, which generates the feeling of a whole, although each of them can be interpreted individually; ceramics, wood, concrete... these are the materials for which the building is recognisable.
In the skin of the building, the ceramics adapt to the different needs and orientations of the façades. In all of them, empty and full spaces alternate, as well as opaque and translucent or transparent parts in different ways. The opaque parts are "broken" with the use of different textures and colours of ceramic so that the complex is broken up, while controlling the natural light that bathes the building inside.
A unique roof is proposed for the above-ground building, made up of subtle inverted vaults that appear on the façade and that link, albeit indirectly, with the order and presence of the vaults of the neighbouring roofs of the box seats building, as another mechanism for integration and recognition of the strength and uniqueness of the neighbourhood.
