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Architects: aEa - agence Engasser + associés
- Area: 2400 m²
- Year: 2012
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Photographs:Mathieu Ducros
Text description provided by the architects. Located at the heart of the ‘Butte Rouge’ garden city in the Paris suburb of Châtenay-Malabry, the Léonard de Vinci sports complex houses a multipurpose sports hall, a dojo and annexes.
The project can be divided into two main sections:
- The base of the building which emerges from the park. The low height of the base is in keeping with the existing buildings and forms an extension of the greenery that runs from the garden-city through to the green roof;
- A ‘wooden lantern’, which forms the bulk of the sports hall and sits on top of the large green roof.
The steel cladding on the base and the perforated iron panelling protect the glass passages and provide a contrast with the wood used in the sports hall.
The sports hall combines the warmth of wood with natural sunlight. A false ceiling made of lengths of larch wood run between the Glulam beams, concealing the technical fittings, while allowing light to filter through and improving the hall’s acoustics. The surrounding walls are doubled with MDF up to the height of the changing rooms.
The wood and aluminium façades, which frame the majority of the glass surfaces in the complex, are protected on the eastern and western sides of the sports hall by large shutters made of retified pine, identical to the northern and southern gables.