SERGIO MANZANO MUNICIPAL SPORTS CENTRE - COVERED SWIMMING POOL AND ANNEXED MULTI-ACTIVITY ROOMS: L'HOSPITALET DE LLOBREGAT, BARCELONA
The building appears to have been added on as a kind of annex to, or prolongation of, the original sports centre premises, which were built in the early nineties.
Although conceived as an autonomous and completely independent building, the project for the swimming pool can be interpreted as a kind of formal prolongation that attempts to soften the rather blunt impact of the original building on its setting.
The purpose of this new project was not, however, intended to complete the sports centre but was rather aimed at balancing the original building and establishing an ensemble effect, which emerges from the architectural independence of the two projects.
Under an immense roof, supported by laminated wooden beams that are almost 40 meters in length, three independent swimming pools with their different uses, serve as the base of this building. The program is completed by a dressing rooms and complementary services area, along with a number of adjacent rooms that are set aside for a range of gymnastic activities.
The interior decorations of all these spaces have been finished in a combination of materials aimed at making maintenance as easy as possible using materials of such diverse qualities as white tiles, in a variety of sizes, lined with intensely coloured phenolic woods, metallic sheeting in the corridors and some of the interior transition areas linking the building to the sports centre. These materials provoke unexpected and dynamic sensations in spaces that have avoided any reference whatsoever to formal complexity.
Materials with excellent environmental qualities were used for the building work, based on technical concepts that have contributed to a decrease in the consumption of conventional energies in favour of alternative energies, with special emphasis being placed on aspects such as the use of solar panels on the roof of the attached spaces to heat the water in the pools and showers, plus the generation of clean electricity by the photovoltaic installations mounted on the pergola and the south facing façade. The glazed façade is protected against solar radiation by the immense cantilevered overhang of the roof, and this in turn ensures an optimum control of the natural light, etc.
The skin that covers the whole building is, however, the most coherent response to a functional need, resulting from the difficulty represented by a pergola/roof of these characteristics, considered from the almost inevitable pretension of appearing to be completely open and alone. The glazed wall provides transparency and light and is intended as a metaphorical imposition. Acceding to transgress this apparent obligation allows for its approach to be defined by means of a combination of different types of glazing that qualify the evidence and allow the light and transparency to intervene and revitalise the space, looking inwards towards the interior and asserting the independence of this building with regard to the adjacent sports centre.
