EL POLI. Two Elements, One New Identity
In La Unión, the municipal sports centre is much more than a sports facility. Known by everyone as El Poli, it is one of the town’s main meeting places — a space where sport, leisure, and everyday social life come together, welcoming people of all ages on a daily basis.
The intervention was driven by a clear objective: to provide a new identity for a place that was already a local landmark, demonstrating how precise architectural actions and a modest budget can transform the perception of an entire environment.
The project is structured around two complementary interventions with distinct yet interconnected strategies: El Poli and La Pérgola.
El Poli
The intervention on the entrance building goes beyond an energy retrofit to become a reflection on its role within the city. Its elongated form, positioned between the urban fabric and the sports complex, allows it to operate simultaneously as an urban edge, a façade, and a gateway.
The project reinforces this condition through a single continuous gesture: a new envelope that unifies the different programmes — changing rooms, toilets, offices, and the cafeteria — under one architectural identity. In contrast to the verticality of the mining chimneys and industrial structures that define La Unión’s landscape, the building asserts itself through horizontality, creating a recognisable linear element that accompanies the public realm.
The new ventilated ceramic façade, composed of vertically ribbed glazed tiles in a vivid lime-green finish, establishes a deliberate contrast with the ochre tones of the mining landscape. Its textured surface and glossy finish allow natural light to continuously reshape the building’s appearance throughout the day, reinforcing the continuity of the architectural volume.
Carefully proportioned openings punctuate the envelope, providing access to the interior spaces, where monochromatic finishes create a striking contrast with the exterior.
The façade is conceived as a contemporary wall — not one that separates, but one that connects. Accordingly, the entrance is designed as a generous threshold through a fully foldable metal façade, dissolving the boundary between the city and the sports complex. When fully opened, the architecture almost disappears, transforming the building into a transitional public space capable of accommodating both everyday use and large public events.
The strong horizontality of the composition is interrupted only by a vertical element emerging above the roofline. It carries a single message: EL POLI. More than a sign, it acts as an urban landmark, making the complex visible from the surrounding streets while reinforcing an identity that has long existed in the collective memory of the town.
La Pérgola
The second intervention transforms an energy infrastructure into an architectural element. The need to maximise solar energy production becomes the project’s design tool, generating a recognisable geometry that gives the complex a new identity while providing shade for the existing football stands.
The canopy originates from a simple rectangular footprint corresponding precisely to the area requiring protection. From this base, the optimal south-facing orientation of the photovoltaic panels and their inclination — determined by the latitude of La Unión — generate a sequence of folded planes that create a distinctive sawtooth profile. The form is therefore not an aesthetic decision, but the direct consequence of energy performance.
Constructed with a three-dimensional steel structure and clad in blue metal sheeting, the pergola constantly changes appearance as light conditions evolve, establishing a visual dialogue with the ceramic façade of the entrance building.
The result is a functional architectural piece that not only supplies renewable energy to the sports complex and improves user comfort, but also becomes a new visual landmark within both the complex and the wider urban landscape.
