Project description
The rectangular Municipal Swimming Pool building extended over an area of 4.000 m2 and conformed to the guidelines of the detail plan – streets, car parks and boundaries. We explored several effects to introduce dynamism and diversity to the front, as well as to promote the necessary amounts of shade and effective control of sunlight exposure, using an external covering of polycarbonate plastic and vertical metallic plates. We thus created a look for the front that transformed throughout the day, as the sun hit the polycarbonate and the metal. This dynamic was further strengthened by the changing view in relation to the perspective, as the observer moved around the building.
In this way, we designed an emblematic architectural work that captured all aspects of its references in the nature of its function, reinterpreting them and retrieving from them its contemporary and innovative concept. Inside the building, the compartments were organised around the bathing area, the highlight of the building. Among those areas, we give relevance to: the entrance hall and reception, seating rows for a maximum of 330 people, bar, shower and dressing rooms, gym, activity rooms, squash room and bathing area consisting of two tanks, the largest of which (20 x 25 m, with 2 50 m long lanes) was reserved for sports training and the smaller one (20 x 10 m) for other health and leisure activities.
The references to the water, the dominant element of a facility of this type, especially evident in the front of the building, made A1V2’s proposal an accomplished and unmistakeable solution.
The project concerned the design of a rectangular building, of approximately 81,40 x 51,25 m, to accommodate a swimming pool complex. The main constraint consisted in having a column-free central area. To this end, the adopted structural solution included a steel roof portal frame, spanning over 34 metres and with 5,60-metre spacing. The building comprises two underground floors and a ground floor. Structurally, all floors were designed as reinforced concrete frame structures, apart from the roof over the central area and parapets. The swimming pools and tanks were also in concrete and connected to the foundation slab.