Anna Martovitskaya, editor-in-chief
speech: / provided speech:
The choice of the architecture of big sports as the theme of one of the speech: issues was a foregone conclusion long ago. On the one hand, sports facilities are, in principle, one of the most popular genres of architecture in the 21st century, and this is easy to explain: in an urbanized society, physical culture is perhaps the most effective way to diversify and energize the depressingly monotonous lifestyle of a modern city dweller. On the other hand, in 2014, Russia hosted the Winter Olympic Games, in 2018 the World Cup is waiting: between these two largest (and, to be honest, the most ambitious) competitions of the planet, a thoughtful conversation about what should be structures intended for their implementation.
It would seem that the answer to this question is obvious, and any specialist will name the key qualities of such objects: they should be multifunctional, energy efficient, transformable and easily adaptable to the needs of the “post-holiday” reality. There are many projects presented in speech: sport that illustrate the validity of this list (or the thesis that, ideally, this should be so). These are the stadiums of Brazil, built for the 2014 World Cup, and the Olympic buildings in Sochi, and the reconstruction of the oldest tennis court in Melbourne - Margaret Court Arena.
On the other hand, the typology of sports architecture is by no means exhausted by megastructures built specifically for holding mass events and elevating sports to the rank of the most spectacular shows on the planet. A much more numerous category is made up of objects intended for everyday training, and we also tried to present it in the maximum variety. Our sports issue contains a badminton hall (Switzerland, Jan Henrik Hansen Architects), a cricket club (Ireland, TAKA Architects), a municipal swimming pool (Seville, Spain, Fernando Suarez Corchete), a street sports center (Denmark, CEBRA) and even the art installation "Footwear Playground" by French architects Guinee * Potin is a chamber and temporary object, but very clearly demonstrated how important sport can play in the renovation of a huge area. All these buildings differ from each other in both purpose and scale, but they have the same ultimate goal - to promote a healthy lifestyle.
The geography of the issue also turned out to be as diverse as possible: it features buildings in Europe, the USA, Taiwan, Japan, and also Australia represented by the already mentioned Margaret Court Arena. By the way, using the example of this object, one can personally trace all the main trends of modern sports construction - these spaces strive to be multifunctional and in the broadest sense universal, serving as a place not only for training and competitions, but also for communication, both social and urban planning.
We devoted a separate review to ski jumps, and our traditional heading "History" analyzes the evolution of the typology of the Olympic stadium. In more detail about what innovative approaches are used today in the design of sports facilities, speech: the architects themselves spoke: the French-Austrian architect Dietmar Feichtinger shared with the magazine his experience in the implementation of "everyday sports" objects, and the American Dan Mees revealed the secrets of creating stadiums and arenas. By the way, Dan Mees became a special guest of the presentation of speech: sport at the DI Telegraph and gave a lecture “Thinking outside the box: the role of innovation in sports architecture”. The MEIS Architects bureau he founded has implemented about 15 projects of stadiums and sports complexes around the world, including countries in Asia and the Middle East, and, as Dan himself emphasizes, different in shape, configuration, area, these objects are similar in one thing: they do not create a spectacular background for spectacular competitions, but a space of complicity, true unity of athletes and their fans.
