Sport And Peace

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 02:26

"A. Len" has been working with the typology of sports facilities since the mid-2000s, the site has accumulated more than two dozen projects and buildings of this topic, and although the company does not fundamentally limit the scope of any functional specialization, projects for sports occupy a significant a place. The peculiarity of the approach lies in the variety of tasks and interpretations, ranging from the usual sports centers and sports centers to multifunctional complexes with a bright architecture and a wide range of possibilities. Among which, first of all, it should be noted the completed building of the SKA sports complex, completed in 2016 and which brought the company several awards, both professional and a prize from the government of St. Petersburg. The knowledge accumulated by "A. Len" in the design of sports facilities makes it possible to integrate such functions into complex multifunctional complexes, as, for example, it has been done in the MFC "Energia", which is currently under construction in Voronezh. And finally, experience allows us to work with sports infrastructure facilities - as an example, the building of the Mercury Hotel in Saransk, intended primarily for sports teams. One typology "clings" to another and helps development, together they add up to a coherent picture.

“We consider the sports typology to be very important and interesting for us, it constantly forces us to consider new tasks and improve skills,” says Sergey Oreshkin, head of the A. Len company. - One of the important features of sports facilities, such as museums and theaters, is the absence of the need for outdoor lighting, which gives the architect the ability to freely operate with shape and volume. Another feature that gives the architect freedom of creativity is the technological need to design large interior spaces for a large number of spectators and athletes. And some sports immediately set the motive for the overall shape of the building. For example, a diving complex automatically acquires a large scale and size to accommodate towers inside a building."

Large sports complexes

This has been almost forgotten, but the SKA sports complex project was the result of a revision of the concept that won the 2012 competition. The competition project was subordinated to the motif of the triangle, which also determined the slope of the facade wall facing Rossiysky Prospekt, and united the volume of the ornamental pattern.

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1/4 Competitive project of an indoor sports complex. 1st place © A. Len
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2/4 Competition project of an indoor sports complex. 1st place © A. Len
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3/4 Competition project of an indoor sports complex. 1st place © A. Len
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4/4 Competition project of an indoor sports complex. 1st place © A. Len

The constructed building of the SKA sports center differs from the winning project: it has become more compact, less spread out; the pattern of triangles was replaced by a pattern of light strokes, more clearly reminiscent of the symbol of the club - a five-pointed star woven into lines that resemble the tracks of speed skating blades on ice. But this is the skill of architects in order to save the project, take into account all the wishes and bring the work to the end, without handing it over to anyone else.

“We started the project after winning a closed architectural competition, to which famous St. Petersburg architects and several European bureaus were invited,” says Sergei Oreshkin. “Moreover, in the next phases of the project, we twice won similar competitions, perhaps with a slightly less strong line-up of participants.”

In the SKA complex, it was possible to realize not only the volume and facades, but also the interiors, which became an organic continuation, or rather, even the culmination of the entire complex: a plastic concrete atrium staircase, stars of snowflake lamps, a strict combination of monochrome shades - all components of a solemn, brilliant, impressive space is available. Non-linear sculptural plastic emphasizes the modernity of the building and claims to be compared with "star" architecture - not only in the sense of symbolism and the will to win, but also in the neo-modernist approach, which Russian architects are not always able to implement.

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1/10 Sports complex of the SKA ice hockey club. Realization, 2016 © A. Len
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2/10 Sports complex of the SKA ice hockey club. Realization, 2016 © A. Len © A. Len
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3/10 Sports complex of the SKA ice hockey club. Realization, 2016 © A. Len © A. Len
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4/10 Interiors of the lobby and the museum of the sports complex of the SKA ice hockey club. Realization, 2016 © A. Len
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5/10 Interiors of the lobby and the museum of the sports complex of the SKA ice hockey club. Realization, 2016 © A. Len
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6/10 Interiors of the lobby and the museum of the sports complex of the SKA ice hockey club. Realization, 2016 © A. Len
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7/10 Interiors of the lobby and the museum of the sports complex of the SKA ice hockey club. Realization, 2016 © A. Len
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8/10 Interiors of the lobby and the museum of the sports complex of the SKA ice hockey club. Realization, 2016 © A. Len
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9/10 Interiors of the lobby and the museum of the sports complex of the SKA ice hockey club. Realization, 2016 © A. Len
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10/10 Interiors of the lobby and the museum of the sports complex of the SKA ice hockey club. Realization, 2016 © A. Len

The competition project of the sports center, made in 2014 for the South Korean province of Daegu, around the time when the construction of the SKA center in St. Petersburg began. The projects are somewhat related: the boldness of forms, which is felt in the interior of SKA, in the Korean project spills out onto the facades, subordinate, as the architects explain, to the context of the axes of "town-planning fabric, formed under the influence of the natural landscape of the area." The extended volume is curved at an angle, covered with cutouts of windows, a bit reminiscent of hieroglyphic icons. In the place where the wings of the building descend - one intended for competitions and performances, the other for everyday sports - an open amphitheater and a public square where the architects planned to preserve the existing trees fit.

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1/7 Dalseong-gun County Sports Complex Project, Daegu, South Korea © A. Len
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2/7 Dalseong-gun County Sports Complex Project, Daegu, South Korea © A. Len
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3/7 Dalseong-gun County Sports Complex Project, Daegu, South Korea © A. Len
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4/7 Dalseong-gun County Sports Complex Project, Daegu, South Korea © A. Len
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5/7 Dalseong-gun County Sports Complex Project, Daegu, South Korea © A. Len
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6/7 Dalseong-gun County Sports Complex Project, Daegu, South Korea © A. Len
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7/7 Dalseong-gun County Sports Complex Project, Daegu, South Korea © A. Len

Development of typology

The project of the Children and Youth Academy of FC "Zenith" in the Frunzensky District, 2016, designed for 600 students under twenty years of age, is of no less scale. Its center is a full-fledged arena for the performances of youth teams; several training buildings are lined up on the sides. The ornamented, streamlined sides of the arena follow the same neo-modernist trend as previous projects.

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1/5 Complex of sports facilities for the football academy of children and youth FC "Zenith" © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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2/5 Complex of sports facilities for the football youth and youth Academy of FC "Zenith" © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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3/5 Complex of sports facilities for the football youth and youth Academy of FC "Zenith" © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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4/5 Complex of sports facilities for the football academy of children and youth FC "Zenith" © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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5/5 Complex of sports facilities for the football academy of children and youth FC "Zenith" © Architectural bureau "A. Len"

It should be noted that Sergei Oreshkin has been cooperating with the Zenit club for a long time: in 2008 he developed a project for the club's training base in the Leningrad region, which is also not alien to the bold facade bend and bold consoles with a deep overhang.

However, recent projects of the bureau's sports complexes continue the same theme. The dynamic solution of the complex with a swimming pool for Tula resembles the first version of the 2012 SKA project, with a bevel of one of the facades. Extensive stained-glass windows, opening views of the surroundings, are decorated with wide slopes, which work the feeling of solidity and plasticity of the volume.

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1/9 Universal sports complex with a swimming pool in Tula © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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2/9 Universal sports complex with a swimming pool in Tula © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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3/9 Universal sports complex with a swimming pool in Tula © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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4/9 Universal sports complex with a swimming pool in Tula © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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5/9 Universal sports complex with a swimming pool in Tula © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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6/9 Universal sports complex with a swimming pool in Tula © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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7/9 Universal sports complex with a swimming pool in Tula © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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8/9 Universal sports complex with a swimming pool in Tula © Architectural bureau "A. Len"
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9/9 Universal sports complex with a swimming pool in Tula © Architectural bureau "A. Len"

The same principles are being developed by the project of the "Academy" sports complex in Voronezh: a large form, bevels of facade planes, as if examining the environment and reflecting it in tape stained-glass windows, at the same time letting in natural light and views of the surroundings. The specialization of the two volumes is reflected in the composition: fitness, tennis, go-karting and other sports for residents of neighboring houses are located in a small triangular volume, in the main wing there are stands and large sports pools. An ornamental approach: light surfaces are covered with a stylized pattern, dark ones alternate with glass and blinds - reminds of the South Korean project and the first version of SKA. In some parts, the building is five stories high.

Multifunctionality

The most important ability of an architect is the ability to operate with different functions, including them in the complex, sometimes intertwining like a volumetric puzzle, which happened in the project of the Voronezh MFC Energia. It included the task of preserving and reconstructing the building of the complex of the same name, built in the 1980s, but did not begin to function - after the renovation, the late Soviet building will unite itself, in addition to the sports "core", housing, a hotel, shops, a cultural center - in a word, it will become a miniature city in which you can spend time without going outside.

Diversity

Meanwhile, sports can be extremely different. In the portfolio of "A. Len", for example, there is a layout for a golf club and a project for a mountain tourist complex in the city of Sochi. The Waterville water park at the Pribaltiyskaya Hotel impresses with its scale and curved structures of glued-wood ceiling, built on the principle of trusses. The experience of design and construction was used by architects when working on projects for water parks in Yaroslavl and Nizhny Novgorod.

Sports for life

But no large stadiums would be needed if there were no district sports complexes and medium-sized sports complexes. They are responsible for the health of the nation and for the development of a functional typology. These buildings, however, are often built according to rather unsightly designs - and they, without requiring stellar architecture, still sometimes form the core of the district, a public space, a meeting and training place for ordinary people, not Olympic athletes. Children's sports schools are very important in this sense. And sports facilities. It is essential when the project of such a building is individual and well thought out. A. Len has quite a lot of similar medium-scale projects, starting from the sports complex in 2006 on Narodnogo Opolcheniya Street, a project with a rather complex sculptural form and an outflow of oxidized copper on the facades, and ending with the recently opened sports complex in Sochi.

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5/10 Sports and recreation center. Leningrad region., Der. Kudrovo, New Okkervil microdistrict. Project, 2012 © A. Len
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6/10 Children and youth sports school. Petersburg, Sosnovaya Polyana, apt. 26, bldg. 34, 35, 36, 36A. Project, 2012 © A. Len
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10/10 A fitness and wellness center with tennis courts? Narodnogo Militia ave., near house 24. Project, 2006 © A. Len