A layer of glass louvres wraps this Paris sports activities centre by Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes, forming a semi-transparent facade that controls the volume of light, heat and ventilation getting into the building .
The Jules Ladoumègue Sports Centre supplies new fitness services for the Parisian suburb of Pantin, which borders a ring road surrounding the city.
Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes – which has offices in Paris and Vienna – felt the greatest way to achieve an adaptable indoor surroundings would be to surround the developing with sensor-managed glass louvres. These open or shut depending on the wind and temperature, and can also be operated manually.
“Transparency is the handwriting of our studio – all of our projects champion this link between the interior and exterior,” the studio told Dezeen. “As a public creating, this gymnasium had to be an urban signal. The facades express the diversity of its functions and the exemplary high quality of its climate engineering.”
The sports complex comprises two new buildings set close to existing playing fields. As nicely as the five-storey fitness centre, which is clad in stainless steel panels on its decrease ranges to create reflections of the surroundings, there is also a separate tennis centre at the edge of the site, with six indoor courts.
The task is component of a broader energy to integrate Paris with its suburbs. It was initiated by the extension of a tramline to the city’s east, which essential a new servicing centre to be created on the site’s taking part in fields. To accommodate this with out dropping services, the architects had been asked to design and style the two new buildings all around the maintenance centre, with the tennis centre placed on leading of it.
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“The sports activities centre gets to be representative of the new urban continuity amongst Paris and its outskirts,” stated the architects, whose other current tasks contain a 760-metre-prolonged pedestrian bridge to France’s historic Mont Saint-Michel island commune.
“The notions of room, urban integration, and functionality, as effectively as those of light, transparency and comfort, deeply contributed to the style,” they extra.
The architects placed two staircases at the side of the 5-storey constructing to make it more easily available from the street. 1 of the staircases is external, and prospects to a terrace on the initial floor. The other staircase is behind the glass louvres, and offers entry to all levels inside.
Inside, there is a triple-height climbing wall stretching from the basement to the first floor, with multi-coloured handgrips to indicate the distinct paths up the wall.
On the second floor, there is a double-height court for basketball, volleyball, badminton and handball, with micro-perforated birch walls to assist muffle the sound. Showers, offices and seating regions are organized across two levels in the room surrounding the court.
The fourth floor contains squash courts, a excess weight space, and a double-height dance studio with a glazed wall overlooking the web site, and the fifth floor houses an apartment for the building’s caretaker.
Wood flooring was employed during to provide a sturdy surface, and the concrete structure and pipework was left exposed.
“As nicely as the transparent exterior, we also like the interior to feel transparent by not hiding the concrete and pipework,” said the architects.
The dance studio, squash courts and excess weight room at the top of the building open on to an inner courtyard, which supplies outdoor exercise space. It is clad in the identical stainless steel panels utilised on the lower levels.
“We utilised stainless steel to make the facade brighter, and also for its sustainability, since it has a really extended lifespan,” explained the architects.
The new fitness centre is opposite the site’s original concrete athletics centre from 1970, known as the Pagode, and the passage amongst the two buildings kinds a more logical entrance from the street to the playing fields.
“The interaction among the new building and the current one creates a new ‘door’ in front of the new tramway station,” said the architects. “The expressive style of the Pagode on a single hand, and the transparency and lightness of the new developing on the other, produces a robust dialogue of opposites.”
The new tennis building at the edge of the website is covered in a double layer of polycarbonate panels. The translucent panels feature horizontal shutters to give shade on the eastern facade, and sensor-controlled shutters are integrated among the panels on the other three sides.
To enliven the 200-metre-lengthy building’s interior, the architects employed a brilliant red finish on the ceiling. The colour continues in strips down the side walls like keys of a piano, as a reference to the close by Philharmonie de Paris.
The area of the tennis centre up coming to the city’s busy ring street also gives an acoustic barrier for the rest of the internet site.
Construction for the tennis centre and fitness centre was finished in two many years and nine months, and the project price range was €26.seven million (£18.9 million).
Photography is by David Boureau.
Web site strategy 
Ground floor program 
2nd floor program 
Fourth floor plan Dezeen
