EKIPE sport&family club
Located on the slopes of Mount Etna, the new Catania sports center enriched with its majestic sobriety one of those urban voids for a long time looking for identity. In an abandoned city cutout, among typical residential buildings of the '80s, inserted in a jagged and uneven fabric, a strip of land of about 12,000 mq welcomes an articulated construction meant to accommodate activities of various categories dedicated to sports and fitness lovers.
The volumes ideally divide into four parts the lot on which they stand, obtaining outside an area for parking and three outdoor soccer fields: a central and single level stick runs longitudinally along the ground.
An exterior walkway connects the pool on the roof of one of the numerous rooms for fitness located on the south by the portion north of the architectural complex; through an oblique cut discernible zenithally, it guts almost at the middle the central building, wider and larger, which is the main focus of the project idea.
A fair-faced concrete volume, slightly tilted almost to reclining on the gradient in the middle of the lot, rises to a height of about 8 meters and in its regular external rigidity it contains inside different spaces, which fit together in an articulated game of double heights and irregular cuts.
The whole project is based on the dynamic organization of spaces diversified for typology, which follow the flows arising from the graft of several planned activities at various levels.
It's possible to recognize, accompanied by the necessary supporting services, areas for swimming activities (three covered pools on the ground floor), fitness (five rooms located in several places), recreational entertainment for the little ones (a playroom with external game space), catering (a dining room served by bar with views over the fields and internally on the largest pool).
These same areas, which for the most communicate minimally with the outside, hatch intimately to reduced sky corners, as if to exclude the trivial boundary from the busy and vibrant organization of guarded areas.
A design choice based on implosion, a building closed on itself that lives of its interior, communicating with the outside world only through sought views that little glimpse the context in which it is inserted.
