The project deals with the intervention on a sports facilities built in 1976, with a swimming pool added ten years later. The pre-existing set presented serious dysfunctions from a traffic and communications point of view, both internally and with the elements of the environment. The initial project proposed the construction of a multi-sports hall next to the pre-existing facilities, but the final intervention acts on all the elements of the old hall, by means of the addition of new architectural elements or the recovery of other elements that were obsolete from a functional point of view. A new building that acts as a transport interchange is constructed. The intervention takes into account two basic considerations: the relationship of the new sports complex with its immediate environment, and the articulation and coherence of the different functional components that make it up.
The new Bonaigua sports centre is a project that originally won a competition called in 1996 by the Sant Just Desvern City Council, in Barcelona. Our proposal, far from being in the new location that was suggested, abandoning the existing outdated complex, risks being placed on top of it in order to solve the accessibility of the complex. In this way, the old complex is also recovered with a building that works as a transport interchange, which connects with the environment, with the promenade and the future park, and joins the different pieces together with a new elevator and ramps. This connection gives meaning to the current situation of the building as the future gate of the park, marked by the two large trusses that appear on the roof.
Far from a desire for mimicry, fragmentation and integration, our proposal has sought, with the density, scale and resounding nature of the intervention, to reclassify a chaotic environment, a borderline place where the urban world mixes with the rural one.
The building has been designed with a structural and constructive logic conditioned by bad terrain: the roof is supported by two large external trusses that allow us to reduce the external volume to the strictly useful. Supported by 4 pillars that tread carefully on the existing facilities, the structure of the track turns 90º and takes advantage of the existing foundation at one end while the other is given over to a truss that supports the new bleachers and encloses the changing rooms.
Each element, structure, installation and enclosure are assembled in the work and left visible in order to mark their independence. The materials used emphasise the definition of a dense interior. Polycarbonate diffuses the light on the track, corridors and changing rooms to build a dense fluid atmosphere that fills the great void of the multi-sports hall. The dark blue enamelled ingot absorbs the light providing depth and reflections.
