Functionality, aesthetics, livability and sustainability. This foundation of every creative project becomes even more important when building a sporting complex that, compared to the past, increasingly puts people first instead of the structure.
Sport is increasingly correlated with quality of life and is a way to renovate and regenerate urban areas to create entertainment and commercial or urban attractiveness, and also enhance and boost the value of structures of common interest, hospitality, or private residences.
Each of these specializations has its specificity, including those that require an architectural firm to work as part of an truly multidisciplinary team to manage the complexity.
Large structures need careful masterplans that respond not only to urban planning regulations, building and safety codes, and the regulations of the various sporting specializations but that also optimize energy and water provision as well as escape routes, firefighting, infrastructure and appropriate, tested materials.
Middle-sized sporting areas for use by a territorial community or a society move the objectives towards polyfunctionality and flexibility, not only for more than one sport but also for energy cost containment and sustainability as well as long-term maintenance needs.
In due proportion and despite the experience in complex sporting structures (project Studio13), it is in the dimension of hospitality and private residences that designing for sport and wellness becomes a stimulating creative challenge. The smaller spaces require precise rationality and at the same time the solutions, colors, and materials must be visually elegant, attractive and motivating to make physical activity and consequent relaxation always a pleasant experience, never monotonous.
Lighting, acoustics, the effective use of mirrored surfaces, and the choice of furnishings and fitness equipment become actual “structural” elements to carefully reflect on, both in the project design and economic feasibility phase and in the worksite phase. Peculiarities that merit further examination in a later post.
by Ilenia Girolami
