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In a mixed setting with a line of public housing on one side and an exceptional natural park on the other, this new sports complex is a focal point not just for sports activities and special events but also for meeting and exchanging.
A copper-coloured nugget, this attractive unit is set in greenery, a landscape from which a climbing room emerges like an urban beacon. The building is one with the surrounding plant- life yet stands out from the other buildings.
Its mystery sharpens the curiosity and inspires a sense of desire. Its uneven monolithic mineral shape, like a strange precious stone lying in the landscape, uses its contrast with the surroundings to harmonise with them.
An open, transversal slit runs through this new landscape and stretches outwards to the Bièvre Valley, like an invitation to pierce the secret of a precious rock, and triggers the subtle permeability between the inside and outside. It is the key to a closer reading of the building that reveals its transparency as one draws closer to it.
The sports complex is given structure by a play of visual breaches that smudge the borders between the outside and the in side with nature omnipresent. These framed openings highlight the remarkable interior and exterior elements. Sporting events define the various available vantage points. The analogy with nature is deeply grounded in the building’s structure through the choice of noble, integral materials that will age gracefully in time.
With its multi-facetted walls the building changes appearance according to the time of day and the season. In daylight the glass walls turn the monolith into shimmering crystal, while at night it becomes a light source in itself, shining out through the angular walls.
The building’s interior harmonizes with its envelope. Wood panelling covers the walls, and the fabric-hung ceilings echo the volumes defined by the facetted façades.
By choosing this calm venue, sensitive to surrounding nature and direct in the way it manages its multi-functions, the building achieves balance between humility and strength, the very values of the athletes who perform there. It speaks of the power of nature whilst appealing to simplicity and economy.
archi5 was founded in 2003, the fruit of its foun- ders’ common agency experience and the ap- proach they share to architecture.
A context-based approach to projects is key : the site, the programme, the social and cultu- ral challenges are all examined, analyzed and compared. These data are then transformed into questions.
The projects offer a dynamic and comprehensive response to those issues to the highest standard that has come to be archi5’s trademark.
This approach is visible, legible in every building. It confers meaning and form and is perceptible in the projects’ applications, spaces and envi- ronmental impact. It is the essence of our confi- dence in architecture, its capacity to enhance humankinds’ environment.
The agency uses its acumen and know-how to instill this ethos throughout and to guarantee its continuity. archi5 has a staff of 35 working out of Paris and Warsaw. Establishing strategic links with the best technical partners and expert consultants the agency further develops its skil- ls.
The success archi5 has achieved in public contract tenders and the private sector has al- lowed the agency to expand its horizons beyond Europe. archi5 currently has big urban develop- ment projects in train in Argentina and Brazil and a Museum in Rabat.
We propose an interpretation of a form of archi- tecture that is sensitive to the challenges it deals with, mindful of those who will live with and in it, ambitious in its convictions.
