ArchiWeb Station: Salvador Espriu Sports Complex by Soldevila Arquitectos

All images courtesy of soldevila arquitectos

Designed by Soldevila Arquitectos, the Salvador Espriu Sports Complex is located in a spacious area between residential neighborhoods of Badalona city and the C31 motorway Barcelona-Mataró, at a lower level. This location creates the need of a vision of the complex at the speed of a moving vehicle, resolved in an urban façade of a great scale.

The equipment building is situated in the center of the complex, perpendicular to the motorway and with an entrance at the level of the street, higher than the game courts. Here are the control area (organization and administration) and the rest of the center's rooms.

The strategy of the building consists of creating a slightly inclined building, enabling an easy evacuation and recovery of water from the showers and rain, and also offering a higher façade visible from the motorway. It is a very light building with a steel structure and walls formed of industrial elements, with an easy maintenance and reposition due to an assembly method using lightweight construction almost exclusively.

The lower floor is very open to the court level, thanks to the height which is lost in the slope of the building. On the headwall is an open space of a high atmospheric quality, where the bar and terrace are located. On the main floor, the façades are generated by the peripheral galleries which give access to the changing rooms, through metallic posts lined in polycarbonate. Landscape openings, along its full length allow a vision of the game courts in every moment. The façades turn into a key element of the building, with a high transparency and variable tonality, depending of the sunlight and time of the day. At night the building transforms into a great lamp, offering a global unitary and recognizable view of this area of the city.

This building completes a complex started in 1990 with the municipal garage of Can Cabanyes (Soldevila arqtes.). Due to its presence on the motorway and its unique geometry, the building turns into an urban reference.