Badminton Academy - a sports and recreation complex with a swimming pool and gyms, Vladimir Bindeman designed on the border of the Laikovo residential complex, a large residential complex of neoclassical architecture, whose construction has recently turned out to be frozen. However, the building of the badminton academy was decided independently, does not argue and does not adapt to the architecture of the residential complex, which allows the authors to believe that the project of the sports complex may be in demand: if not here, then somewhere else. So, the sports complex was supposed to be located not far from the forest, in a low part of the residential complex, in the triangle between the stadium and the school. According to the head of the workshop, Vladimir Bindeman, the authors tried to make the building of the Academy as "invisible" as possible in order to soften the transition from one type of development to another - hence the "green" concept: roof slopes, embracing, as if wrapping themselves in volumes, wooden slopes of the portals, and pergolas covering wide stained-glass windows. All this is designed to dissolve the volume in the natural environment, to reveal the views from the inside to the outside, and from the outside to somewhat level its dimensions. We had to abandon the original idea to really plant all the roofs with plants, but the real grass was replaced by the “camouflage” color of oxidized copper.
The composition of the building follows a set of functions: broken green roofs, often descending to the ground, cover several double-height volumes. The core is a parallelepiped of the badminton hall, which unites 16 courts. At its ends, on the sides, there are two vestibules; in the center there is a “layer” of a fitness center and a swimming pool behind it. Functionally, it has nothing to do with the badminton hall - the rooms are located at different levels and are separated by a wall, but it shares spacious changing rooms with the pool, at the junction of the wet and dry zones, so that the same function is not duplicated. On the first floor of the fitness center, there is a children's room, squash and ping-pong halls, and larger gyms on the second. This part also has a separate entrance for schoolchildren. Next to it is the entrance to the two-level underground parking.
All volumes are of slightly different heights, in addition, the slopes of the roofs are directed in different directions - and the green hill stratifies, opens up with sections of stained-glass windows and vertical "pergolas" slats. The building, therefore, does not seem to be an origami figure and is endowed with a distinct multi-facade, each angle is revealed in its own way. A round anti-aircraft window is placed in the roof of the larger vestibule - it does not follow its slope, but rises higher, approximately like a shuttlecock stuck in the grass, a sign of the main function of the complex.
The largest, badminton hall is the most noticeable: its facade protrudes “forward and upward” as a portico of sharp, deeply inserted ribs, accentuating the dominant role of the volume located on it. The drawing of the light-scattering mesh, which is necessary to protect the players from direct sunlight, also plays up the contours of the "skirt" of the shuttlecock, and the portico itself resembles its development - there are a lot of speaking details in the project.
Undoubtedly, the building's modern image and dynamic lines emphasize the sporting function, but the same cascades, asymmetry and unexpected shapes, combined with wooden colonnades and green roofs, make it tolerant to almost any environment.
The authors plan to show the project on
exhibition "Architectural Potential", which, hopefully, will give it a chance to take a place among other implemented sports facilities of Architecturium - a swimming pool and fitness center are desirable in any residential complex.
