SPORT HALL RELATIONS WITH CITY AND LANDSCAPE: PRINCIPLES

We can understand urban relations among sports halls and cities mainly debating 2 categories of principles: Integration and Place. Integration relates to sports hall facility can harmoniously communicate with the city while place relates the sports facility with a local symbolic dimension.

Integration

Integration can be understood starting from 3 key principles: Context, Connectivity, and Accessibility.

1) Context

When talking about the context, we can understand it in terms of its location about the city and its Integration with surroundings.

1.1) Locations

There are 3 basic typologies: the urban, the suburban, and the periurban.

1.1.1) Urban

Urban sports facilities are normally deeply embedded in the urban fabric and are normally constrained to the dimensions and modularity of urban blocks. Good examples of such sports facilities are the early football stadiums built by A. Leitch in Glasgow and Liverpool. Both were built in a residential context following the logic of the neighborhoods in the surroundings, according to their urban axis and directions. Urban contexts offer countless opportunities for the city, becoming a landmark and offering legibility to the territory. The Sport Hall enclosures can offer an active frontage and vibrant streets, establishing a frank dialogue with the city also on non-match days. Real estate prices and regulations make this kind of typology rare, though. Most of the time, we can only find such structure when a renovation of an existing Sports Hall is taken into consideration. vibrant streets, establishing a frank dialogue with the city also on nonmatch days. Real estate prices and regulations make this kind of typology rare, though. Most of the time, we can only find such structure when a renovation of an existing Sports Hall is taken into consideration.

1.1.2) Sub-Urban

Sub-urban settings can be a problem considering the low attractivity that they may have. When not adequately treated, it may become uneconomical for public transport connections and active frontage. This can generate as an imperative the use of the car and generate desert and extensive parking lots, and, consequently, no natural surveillance. It can be adequately treated, though, when connected with a bigger urbanistic and landscape plan, that can insert the sports hall in a park context, not merely as a sports facility, but also as a meaningful new public assembly. A good example of such configuration was proposed by Le Corbusier in the Stadium for 100.000 places, in Paris.

In this project, the Stadium was thought of as a new formal public assembly, in the landscape of the park. The shell is placed in the greenery, with a big canopy roof that provides shadow to the supporter studying the movement of the sun.

The Sub-Urban context is what we find in Santa Giulia, after the reconfiguration of the area from an industrial settlement to a new green area in the context of the new PGT (Piano di Governo del Territorio) for Milan. Being an expected park, surrounded by a residential area under redevelopment, it offers to the Sports Hall designer the opportunity of, at the same time, has the advantage of building a new public facility enhanced by the landscape, but also a population density that justifies its use on non-game days.

1.1.3) Peri-Urban

These Sports facilities are typically built for major events, like World Cups or Olympics. Their use after the events are likely to be below the design. This makes these structures have no function at all and have a huge financial and environmental cost. We can exemplify it with the Jeju Stadium, built for the Japan and South Korea 2002 World Cup, which is situated in the rural countryside of Jeju Island, in South Korea. The decentralization from city to suburbia is evident across the globe. But these peri-urban locations are often split apart emotionally, physically, and visually from the city, which contributes negatively to the sense of belonging for supporters.

1.2) Integration with surroundings.

Regardless of the context (Urban, Suburban, or Peri-urban site), the sports hall should integrate with its surrounding context. There is a responsibility of considering the existing setting, connections, block scale, urban morphology, and vertical scale, to be sure that the sports facility will enhance the environment in that location and provide the best benefit that integration may provide.

As already anticipated, Santa Giulia lies on a sub-urban field, presenting low density. However, it presents high accessibility, with the train, metro, and highways infrastructures nearby, which allows us to transform it into a place for use also on non-event days. This opportunity will be further explored with the design of the park and the internal functional gallery inside the Arena.

Arenas should also follow the urban movement and morphological patterns. The pictures aside show good examples of how the morphology can be respected despite the relatively big size of arenas. The size, orientation, and shape of new arenas should ensure that existing movements and patterns are kept, enhanced, or created.

It is easier to identify these morphology patterns in an urban context, but it is also possible, extrapolating a larger context and the meaning of Santa Giulia as a strategic green area for Milan, to understand the pattern of the open blocks in the southeast part of Milan to repropose a neighborhood in Santa Giulia and insert the Ice Hockey Arena as an enhancer of the landscape design aligned with an urban pattern characterized by the existence of green open spaces.

2) Connectivity and accessibility

The success of a new Arena must have high levels of connectivity and accessibility. That can only be achieved with a public transportation infrastructure that allows a location to be reached by a significant amount of people in a reasonable time and price. When arenas are too detached from the urban perimeter and need to be reached by cars, that creates an issue of creating large areas for parking lots. Parking lots, besides being a huge waste of land, is also a barrier to pedestrian, and, by extension, to full integration between Arena and city.

The integration comparison picure exemplifies how isolated Arenas can be when they do not provide easy and clear access from public transportation for spectators.

The immediate surroundings for a stadium, then, should be a pedestrian space. The experience of going to the Arena should be though since the moment a fan enters a public transportation station, passing through when he/she gets off in the closest station and walks to the Arena. The connection between the station and the Arena is a priority. This clear principle was followed in the decision on where to place the Arena in Santa Giulia. The access should be the more enjoyable and direct as possible. That is why the Arena was placed aligned with the boulevard (designed in Foster’s plan) and comes from Rogoredo Station. Taking advantage of the already existent boulevard, it is possible to provide a pleasant experience to the spectator, through a controlled microclimate and the availability of convenience and safety.

Place

The principles that govern the understanding of place in the relation of sports hall and city can be classified as Sense of place, Destinations, and Local Identity.

1) Sense of place

Because of their dimension and importance, arenas should be considered as civic buildings. As so, the place around Arenas should have a public realm. This public realm can add an image and identity to the place itself. As people meet and get together around arenas, they will probably spend more time outside their stands. That is why is crucial to provide complementary uses and activities as well as active frontages, to enhance the public sense.

In the Design of Santa Giulia’s Arena, the public realm was enhanced by the design of a park, connected with the existing built environment, a boulevard, and an interior gallery, which provides additional uses for the spectators and the public in general, when in non-event days. The built environment and natural characteristics can make the spectator experience and the city’s image better. The Arena can offer views of key features, as a skyline, a coast, or a park. This helps to bring unique character to the Arena and create a bond between Arena and its community. Souto de Moura’s Braga Stadium is a good example of how an Arena can enhance the view of a particular landscape. There are many situations in which an Arena can enhance the supporter experience in different contexts, exemplified in the comparison of contexts.

Santa Giulia characteristics, thus, will imply a park setting context surrounded by a residential suburban one.

A case study for the concept definition for Santa Giulia’s Arena was SAP Arena, designed in Munich by 3XN architects (figure aside)

The stand-alone appearance of SAP Garden Arena also inspired the box-shaped design of our enclosures, in such a way that the integration of the landscape with the building would happen through different height connections to the landscape, enhancing, at the same time, the appearance of the form itself and the design of the landscape.