Internationally selected to represent FAPYD at Arquisur Aroztegui Prize

   The area:  The Independence Park in Rosario represented, at the beginning of the 20th century, the incorporation of a vast green surface into the city's system of public spaces, at the -then- urban border.
Within the park, large plots in the farthest parts from the center were granted to public and private sports institutions whose facilities guaranteed  a basis of usage for the park.
     Associated with the availability of surface, the completion of these plots responds, in all cases, to a succession of episodic and heterogeneous interventions scattered in space and time. The city's expansion throughout the century requalified the urban role of the park into a funnel between the city center and residential areas of irregular characteristics and into a spatial and symbolic centrality for neighborhood, city, and metropolitan area.
  

   The site:  Located at the intersection of two important access avenues, the now-called Municipal Stadium is located at the southwestern vertex of Independence Park, in relation to a low-density residential tissue in which situations of vulnerability can be recognized. Within the site, there is a flat 400m athletics track -the only one in the city- on which three Heritage Stands and a small block of services rest, as well as a competitive skating rink for which reinforced concrete stands with elevated access have been recently built, and to the east of them, a multi-purpose court.

     The proposal:  Recognizing the curve as a constant trace of both the existing sports infrastructure as well as the immediate organic environment -the park-; the proposal seeks to consolidate and open up the complex to the city through a public walkway that, at the level of the elevated access to the stands of the skating rink, spills into the "in-between" of the current and proposed constructions. This walkway serves as an access/egress route for the attending public in such a way that the circulation of athletes/ public can be eventually isolated, while consolidating new referential paths/perspectives.
     

    The complex:  Given the size of the site and the plurality of vocations it suggests, two large programmatic packs are proposed, whose bond is public space: a social area linked to the urban fabric that entails the refurbishment of the under-stand of the heritage constructions as well as the construction of new workshops under the semi-elevated walkway on the Av. Ovidio Lagos strip; and a multidisciplinary sports area (skating rink, sports hall, olympic pool), suitable for both professional and amateur or educational presentations, whose compositional arrangement is ordered around the unavoidable - once empty, now - open space signified by the athletics track, which metaphorically opens the complex so as to face and invite the socially vulnerable tissue, and whose distributive nucleus is located in the heart of the site, in a sheltered square topped by a toroidal sculpture, where circulatory directives, and prospective and traversal tensions converge, enhanced by a sculptoric landmark.
     

    The multi-sports stadium:  The multi-sports stadium is located at the northeast end of the general complex, set back to the south to create a plaza-atrium for expansion and access to the entire facility via the park. The wet pack is nestled on the southern side of the building, compactly containing without internal contact both bathrooms for the public and changing rooms for athletes.
     

     Structure:  The roof explores the possibilities of steel in non-orthogonal spatial geometries. Its elevation responds to the geometric characteristics of the floor, seeking fluidity of tension through the use of anti-funicular/form-finding simulation software [RhinoVault]. This guarantees fully compressive behavior and reduces the sections used, due to low value or absence of bending moments.
     

     Material inquiries:  Having the compressive behavior certified through form, a parametric definition generates a point cloud that subdivides the form into optimized triangular meshes in 87% of cases, with adjustment pieces made to comply with the roof-shape's boders. This mesh materializes in space through a converging circular tube framework on which triangular workshop-made cells, with a random distribution of opaque and transparent panels, are mounted.
     Thus, large lightweight dome-shaped roofs are mounted on a visually solid and elevated base. This, when viewed through a conceptual lens, implies the sports complex is mounted on the public walkway in the same way that it, in turn, is assembled over a space with a consolidated, territorial, and historically significant meaning in the city.

     Conclusion:  By taking advantage of the possibilities offered by a large plot of land and a strategic location, the goal is to have a urban area and a site that were in a state of degradation be revitalized not only by repurposing or introducing new uses, but by consolidating and mixing previous uses that are already anchored in the public immaginarium: the multisport complex, state-owned and open to the public in its whole extent (the general site, the sports city complex) and the public promenade (the park in a continuum with the walkway). Summing up, the sports city in the neighborhood and in the park, and the park and neighborhood in the sports city.
     The material investigation presents a highly systematizable metal solution for covering a wide range of spans, from the 110 meters of the skating rink to the more modest 45 meters of the multisport stadium; a system that has enough iconic and material power to anchor itself in the symbolic repertoire of the neighborhood and city.