“EL PLANTÍO” FOOTBALL STADIUM
The stadium is located next to the Arlanzón River and La Quinta Park, in the south side, and it integrates inside the sports area called “El Plantío” formed by diverse public facilities, that runs parallel to this extraordinary natural surroundings as a part of the city. An exceptional place of low density; a context that permits to understand the necessity to open up the stadium and to intensify its connections, extending the public spaces to improve the connectivity and the accessibility.
It is a project about civic vocation and urban relation, simultaneously with the river, the park and the city, with an appropriate scale to highlight the importance of the natural landscape, where the trees prevail over the built. In this way, the south facade emphasises the horizontality and the abstraction of the project, through a large cut as a window that highlights the importance of the place connecting the stands with the river.
More than an infraestructure, it is a building that, in such context, must go behind dialogue and integration. The big scale that inevitably comes from the structure is hidden inisde the limits of the enclosure, which is divided into two parts, both made in aluminium.
The lower one as a smooth black plinth, integrating all the access gates to the stadium and gettting lighten in the transparent corners where the commercial spaces are located, completed by a canopy made of the same material to protect the football fans from the rain and the sun. This plinth is connected with the city and the close scale. The upper one, as a white section of vertical condition, that presents soft shapes, more natural and smooth, looks for the relationship with the landscape and with the medium scale of the environment.
Inside, a hallway for perimeter circulation in the shape of a ring, unifies the whole stadium providing the flexibility required and organizes, at the same time, the separation of the stands in two sides.
Construction materials are outlined occupying complete surfaces. These materials, a few and industrialized (precast concrete, aluminium and glass), all of which allow a quick and effective assembly, they also make possible to reduce the construction costs.
The stadium sits in the transition between the natural and the urban and must reaffirm its condition and its public scale. At the end, a white box brings up an architecture issue: the intensification of the urban condition as a response to the environment.
