CULTURAL, FESTIVE AND SPORTS COMPLEX
The Collonges-sous-Salève complex shape reflects a duality between sports and the festive nature of the programme:
(a) a huge 45 m x 100 m base block for the intermunicipal gymnasium and the specialized sports rooms,
(b) a pavilion on the roof of the base for the municipal hall.
The base is part of the ground. Its veiled massiveness anchored to the street above gives the project a foothold in the slope. Its crude minerality, candour and extension of lines, sharing the ground and cutting into the landscape, echo the familiar old walls of the neighbourhood, the ancestral evidence of a rural organisation of land into plots and enclosures. Downhill, this primary massiveness is suddenly put paid to by the totally translucent face of the gymnasium.
The roof of the base is built in the form of a public esplanade and treated as a landscape in its own right. It is a mineral landscape, removed from the ground and insulated from the street by a wall, which positions the entrance off-centre, extending towards the church. The edges of the esplanade rise to create undulation and overlook the entirety of the Genevan plain below and the Jura on the horizon. A sunken fence in the gymnasium roof eliminates the need for guard rails in front of the panoramic view. Emphasis on extending and expanding space, as well as perspective is used here to give a greater dimension to this already large site in terms of interest and taste. This is how the building becomes landscape.
