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Architects: Taller de Arquitectura Miguel Montor
- Year: 2022
Text description provided by the architects. The growth of the Truper tool manufacturing plant has increased significantly in recent years. This has led to the development of its enrollment and the need to increase its facilities, such as industrial canteens, offices, parking lots, etc. Among all these needs, there is one that is very important for the company, which is the well-being of the workers and their families. The plant used to have a sports field where tournaments organized by the union were frequently held. The need for more space led to the decision to relocate the sports field. This project sought to take the intention beyond a sports field and instead create a sports and wellness center for the employees. This center was to include fronton, basketball, soccer and volleyball courts, an open-air gym and a roofed gym, as well as workshop activities such as pilates and yoga. It would also include a doctor's office. Workers will be able to take their families to the facilities to enjoy sports and recreational activities, such as barbecues and picnics, thus creating a place for high-level recreation. This is how the idea of managing this sports center arose.
Part of the challenge was finding the ideal location for a program of this magnitude since it was essential to have a large area for the fields. We proposed to locate it at the end of the plant since in order for it to have a direct connection to the road, as well as an internal connection with the plant. The favourable conditions of the lot were also taken into account in the program., it was easy to place the courts, thanks to the steep nature of the terrain that was a former crop field.
Being in a valley without buildings, the intervention seeks to be almost volumetrically imperceptible and thus manifest the importance of the horizontal landscape with a building that does not hinder the plain view of the context. The built part of the program was decided to be managed below level zero with the workshops, gyms, services and the office.
The idea was that the building would not contradict the aim of being noninvasive, an approach of great importance for the company since, being an industrial building, the opposite usually happens. The built element emerges on the ground, leading to the generating of a crack where the built spaces of the program are developed. We wanted visitors to perceive a trace of pre-Hispanic heritage in their journey between stairways and terraces that descend little by little. The visitor will arrive at the site and as they travel along they will encounter the place while gradually becoming contained within it. We sought to make courtyards by drilling into the ground, this led to the workshops feeling as if they were part of the land from the beginning. Large plates and patios were generated and embroidered with uninterrupted slabs, accompanying the path of voids through the play of horizontal surfaces. The pre-Hispanic sensation became more present through the routes, tectonics, sound and emptiness.
We use concrete pigmented in the tone of the stone of the area for the intervention of the terrain in order to resemble the earth of the ground of the location. We used flagstone on the floor to keep it feeling natural. There are times of the year when the landscape turns into ocher tones and it becomes more noticeable how the building is lost in the surroundings.
In order for the entire lot to be experienced pedestrian-wise along the courts, a series of kiosks were distributed around it. These kiosks were designed according to the identity of the industry, using beams like the ones used in the warehouses. This materiality has the same language but is used in a delicate way without nodes or visible screws. In addition to this, we chose to use the oxide red color in these elements to give contrast to the vegetation and the landscape. The same principles were used in the design of the equipment for the courts, such as benches and resting areas.
When working on a project we always take it as an opportunity to make a kind of tectonic land art piece, where the unbuilt space is much more important than the built one.
