The pavilion located in Tarragona is designed to host part of the sports events carried out during the Mediterranean Games 2018. With a capacity for 5.000 spectators, that can be extended to 7.000. The building is designed as a single volume with an oval floor plan and a domed roof, developed on two levels. The dimensions of the court are 95x65 meters, which allow the simultaneous use of three contiguous handball or futsal courts, providing great versatility to the equipment.
The building is partially semi-buried, which softens its presence in the landscape while significantly improving its energy efficiency. The public access is located on the north façade, and allows the visitors to enter the building on its upper level where the bleachers are situated over the track. At this level there is a large ring that runs around the perimeter of the entire pavilion and allows a unitary interpretation of the pavillion and establishes a permeable visual relationship with the environment. From this level, the public is able to access to the upper bleachers that appear along the east and west sides of the track. On the south façade, the pavilion reveals its true magnitude by welcoming the athletes who enter the lowest level of the building. The changing rooms and complementary services are located at track level, with the rest of the program being resolved on the upper level of the bleachers.
The exterior materiality of the building has ceramics as the main element, making reference to the ancient Roman Tarraco. The outer skin of the building is inspired by the peristyles of classical architecture and is composed of ceramic slats at three levels. The orientation and arrangement of the slats is adapted according to the solar orientation and their position in the building, allowing more transparency on the lower levels than on the upper ones. The interior skin of the building is composed of a cellular polycarbonate enclosure and modular casement windows that maintain the building's watertightness on the interior plane and provide high levels of comfort. This double skin, together with the large central skylight on the roof, makes it possible to control the incidence of sunlight in order to enjoy a high quality of natural lighting throughout the building. Finally, there are motorized windows that allow control and management of natural ventilation which, combined with the inclusion of Canadian wells for air renewal, make it possible to solve the air conditioning of daily use in a passive way.
