Boulodrome
Located in Ganges, at the foot of the Cévennes, this indoor bowling pitch comprises 4 boule lyonnaise pitches and 2 pétanque pitches. Refreshment room and sanitary facilities complete the program.
The municipality wanted us to design a hangar to allow bowlers to train in the winter season and on rainy days.
The hangar is a design we particularly appreciated for it is a primarily useful building where pattern and shape are the result of a clearly precise purpose.
This reducing of the pattern into its simplest terms allows revealing other sensations such as light, outside and inside communication, warmth, or exposure to surrounding landscape. And the bare grey parallelepiped becomes a richer than expected building.
Settled in the north angle of the plot, at the foot of the hill, between a stone wall to the west and a graffiti covered breeze block wall to the north, the bowling pitch opens to the south towards the various activities of the attached sports complex.
The south front, widely transparent in the lower part, opens onto the outside by means of big sliding doors. Just above these a deep overhang allows light and warmth to penetrate in winter while offering a shelter from sun and rain in summer : a simple and evident solution to allow inside activities to extend to the outside.
Conversely, the north side allows good lighting from the north thanks to large openings in the upper part of the wall, while the lower part is blind for protection against prevailing winds. In the summer doors can be opened to create a draft that cools down the atmosphere on the bowling pitches.
This alternating play between opaque and see-through materials, with open/close features, allowed us to include the landscape inside the structure, in order to avoid isolation from the site, of which it is part and parcel.
Interior fittings are arranged in the simplest way on a raw concrete slab around the refreshment room with the sanitary facilities on one side and office space on the other side, immediately facing the bowling spaces and the outside landscape in the distance.
The materials and colours used in the design pertain to the world of hangar structures for they are the best possible balance between the know-how, thrift and sturdiness required: galvanized supporting steel structure, cladding and rooftop in thermolacquered corrugated iron and polycarbonate, painted breeze blocks, solid wood, rough concrete floors.
The choice and distribution of materials, their assembling, their implementation by efficient local firms will foster light, warmth and atmosphere that ensure the building is no simple hangar but a cosy place where people will indulge in playing bowls, having a drink or simply strolling around.
