The water sports palace will be built in the Novo-Savinovsky district of Kazan, on Chistopolskaya street. The name of the latter eloquently reflects the current urban planning situation: the right bank of the Kazanka River began to be built up quite recently, after the adoption of a new general plan for the development of the city, and so far it really resembles an open field, and very picturesque and spectacularly opened to the water area. Kazan developers have long chosen this place for housing construction, but the city authorities decided that high-profile sports competitions are more important. However, as soon as the Universiade is held, a new residential neighborhood will be built around two large sports facilities (next to the Water Sports Palace on the same Chistopolskaya stadium) a new residential neighborhood will be built.
The competition for the design of a water sports complex was held in Kazan in September last year. Three teams took part in it - the consortium of Glavmosstroy and the architectural company NOC (USA), MNIIP Mosproekt-4 and the construction holding Ingeokom and the consortium PSO Kazan, the architectural studio SPEECH and the British engineering company Arup. The architects and investors were faced with a difficult task - to design a spectacular and technologically efficient complex, which after the Universiade can be actively used by both professional athletes and residents of the city. At the same time, the Palace was supposed to turn out to be extremely economical - as they say, there are many objects, and the budget (in this case of Tatarstan) is one. According to the jury, architects Sergei Choban and Sergei Kuznetsov coped with the task best of all, proposing to interpret the water sports center as a giant parallelepiped with a roof of wooden V-shaped structures floating above it.
An important limitation was the very location of the site almost near the water: it was impossible to bury the bowls of the pools in the ground, as is usually done during the construction of such facilities. The architects also did not want to install the complex on supports or a developed stylobate, so that the volume did not look too bulky. Therefore, the authors decided to surround the pool along the perimeter with bulk ramparts.
Initially, the architects understood that they had to deal with a very long parallelepiped, because the bowls of the pools, which, according to the terms of reference, were supposed to be three, cannot be placed one above the other. In fact, the architectural task was to somehow diversify the laconic geometric volume. It was solved with the help of a roof - covering the building with a large "canopy" lined with stainless steel.
Striving for both expressiveness and reasonable economy, the architects were looking for an ergonomic structure composed of the same simple modules. This solution was a hinged arch, assembled from V-shaped large-span wooden beams. Triangular wedges dig into the ground like a giant machine. Their rhythmic alternation, as well as the intensely curved arcs of their outer contour, must be recognized as not alien to water sports. Generally speaking, the silhouette of the building in cross-section, or when viewed from the end, resembles the icon-icon with the image of a swimmer, known since the 1970s - the body is hidden under water (on the icon, water is usually drawn with a wavy line, here the waves are hills), and from above only one hand,entered in a professional crawl stroke. And the head. So, the hand is a roof with a visor, and the head is the body of the building covered by them. It turns out a sports emblem in volumetric expression. However, the similarity is not literal, it looms somewhere on the periphery of consciousness.
The similarity of the Palace with its counterparts of the period of classical post-war modernism, as well as the 1970-1980s, is also not literal. The laconic arrow of a rectangular building, gigantism (in this case forced), pedestals pointed downwards and a gigantic visor resemble something so elusively Niemeyer. If not for some details. Various subtleties work for a sense of modernity, such as the alternation of textures: shiny and matte interspersed with stripes, both in glass and in metal. From the inside, stripes of blinds of a bluish "water" color will be added. In the frames of the windows, the metal, which is customary in such structures, has been replaced by wood; the wooden frames are curved with a thin fan, when viewed from a distance - a completely "non-wooden" outline. The wooden structures inside also soften the impression, depriving it of a bit of brutalism. And the triangular supports on the outside do not form powerful ribs, as might be expected from the logic of the design, but, on the contrary, are smoothed by a transverse and horizontal grid of overlapping strips, like boards on a roof. All these textured subtleties serve to decorate a different kind of complexity - technical. SPEECH architects, together with Arup specialists, proposed using a complex of modern technical solutions in the building of the Palace, which turn it into a complex mechanism that can be customized depending on the circumstances. Sliding walls and floors will reduce the depth and area of pool bowls, control the amount of heated water, and therefore energy consumption. Ventilation of the building will also be able to operate in different modes - economical for those periods when only season ticket holders will be in the pool, and at full capacity during the competition.
The main premises of the Palace are its main sports arena, under the arches of which there are two "bowls". Their dimensions - 50 meters long and 25 meters wide - correspond to Olympic standards, which means they will allow holding the most representative swimming and water polo competitions in them. The third "bowl" measures 33.3 x 25 meters and is equipped with a set of towers and springboards; it is designed for diving and synchronized swimming tournaments, as well as for training and warm-ups before serious swims. The smaller one is separated from the two main pools by a translucent partition covering the entire height of the building.
The architects also envisioned various scenarios for the subsequent, post-Universiade operation of the Palace. The small pool, health center and fitness club have independent entrances - after the competition, they will most likely be used independently of the main complex. There was also a place for a restaurant and a bath.
According to Sergei Kuznetsov, the victory in the SPEECH competition was ensured, first of all, by the clarity of the architectural and planning concept and the active use of foreign experience in the construction of water sports centers. The workshop managed to take into account all the requirements of the International University Sports Federation (FISU), to give the complex a memorable form and at the same time stay within the budget. The water sports palace should be built in 2012, but today the expressive arch of its roof is positioned by the committee of the 27th Summer Universiade as one of the main symbols of the upcoming games.
