The sports center’s concept by Côté Leahy Cardas Architects rests on the alteration of the site on which it will be implemented. A site which has been metamorphosed from an industrial field (a quarry) into a landfill and will now be transformed into a park and environmental complex. By its shape, and its feature, its adaptability to the site, by its suggested trails and visual links, the project expresses the whole transformation, the evolution towards a huge environmental park, opened on research and experimentation. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Our first aim is a sensible integration with the site, improving it without imposing. The integration of a voluminous building into this molded site, at the interface park-boulevard, requests to continue alterations on the natural soil. The undulation of the park will be increased; the ground distorts even more in order to accommodate the future soccer complex’s volume. The mound wins in height to shelter the player’s spaces of the outside play field, stretches out to cover the entrance and huge hall, unfurls in grandstands for the spectators of the outside play field.
New hillocks appear, the ground is not passive, it supports the building in a visible way, embraces it. In reply, the parallelepiped containing the essential volume for the game alters its shape in contact with the park. The shell distorts, spreads out like the goal’s net receiving the ball, giving way to the secondary functions, like the grandstands and administrative zone. The connection is direct; this morphing ties the building to the site. The borders are broken, so favoring interactions.
Sparkling, the box mirrors its environment: the site, the trees and the lake, the sky, the snow, the seasons. Never similar, the changes of aspect call on us. The facade screen towards the street reflects perfectly traffic and neighborhood. The organic shape towards the park is a distorting, playful mirror. This dynamics which we discover in movement confers a potential of renewal, sign of durability, thus sustainable development. At night, the perception is completely transformed, the light transcends and cuts the forms having become abstract, the box merges into the darkness.
Architects: Côté Leahy Cardas Architects Location: Montréal, Canada Team: Diana Cardas, Jacques Côté, Pascal Gobeil, Marie-André Goyette, Nicolas Fortier, Nils Kröger, Nicolas Croteau, Philippe Tremblay Collaborators (second phase): Provencher Roy & associés architects : Claude Bourbeau, Dominique Spickler, Céline-Coralie Mertenat, Alexandre Thibodeau Advisors: Josée Labelle, landscape architect, (NIP Paysage), Lucien Viel, structural engineer (Genivar), Jacques De Grâce, mechanical engineer (Pageau Morel et associés inc.) Status: Competition, finalist, second stage
