Undressing and reinterpreting a poor, imperfect and geological material, to perch on, ultimately, a protective roof of paper almost in a weightlessness and tensioned state where light emanates and seeps at the same time. A mystical and cavernous place arises connecting through experience both territory local identity and collective sport.

 SELF-SUSTAINABILITY: LANDSCAPE AS COLLECTIVE LINK

Land and concretely geology, have a great importance among Güevejar habitants as a identity meaning; Not only as the rural livelihood in the past, but as a very present element in their collective memory. Full of devastating remembrances because of a couple destructions of this rural town, as a result of tectonic plates movement: Lisbon (1775) and Andalusian (1884) earthquakes.

 This building’s self-sustainability lies in its ability to connect with residents, as part of the written and lived local landscape into their memory. Therefore, an inseparable property link is caused, resulting an ethic of respect and shelter to itself and therefore to its self-maintenance.

The “geo-folded” interpretation of clay on the site constitutes the referent element in the local landscape, modeling cavernous spaces of transition between indoor-outdoor facilities as well as those areas dedicated to sport, building a meaningful episode into the unconscious memory of users. The project was an open creative process with the inhabitants, a methodology that seeks not only a more active approach among technicians, public, groups and citizens to understand in a closer way demands and habits, but strengthening the link between people and landscape.

MEDIATING BETWEEN NATURE AND ARTIFICE

Contemporary public places require an intense way of life, an architecture that attracts a greater mix of purposes and unalike attentions. The walled enclosures, geological emergencies of the landscape, get along with new technological elements of this age to complete the new spatial volume. A curved, freestanding and light as a paper metal sheet, seems to perch on the clayey nature by a small gesture, providing the necessary protection for sport through every season. The feeling of lightness and weightlessness of this exotic element of landscape is reasserted through a perimeter light line used as a seam, losing sight of their columns while allowing a mystical and changing illumination at different times.

 Indoor, an element is coated in natural wood which colonizes the central space, circling it and containing certain technological elements such as an elevator, network facilities and retractable bleachers providing a more versatile use of space and organizing the circulations of users and visitants. The firsts run through the compressed galleries of ground level, semi-dark and deep, which make the haul from locker rooms to the center court in a previous preparatory transit for the introversion and self-consciousness to access to the large and bright central volume. However, the visitants are led towards a top visual haul which reinforces the perception of materials and the luminous qualities of the sports center space.