Sports Hall in Žatec

We imagine the new Sports Hall of Žatec as a sustainable landmark settled inside a green park. The project is informed by old rural architecture by wrapping a complex sport program under one single pitched roof at this point of the city of Žatec. The building tries to bring domestic atmospheres in architecture to a large scale project by defining small and medium interstitial spaces between the outdoor park and the main training indoor area. By this means a unique and sensitive wooden roof underlines and confidently organizes the indoor spaces and programme.

The proposal is detailed in all its parts and we highly appreciate the effort that the author's team has put into it. We appreciate the distinctive, landscape and architectural concept, the close connection with the adjacent public space and park. A green campus, a magnet in a park deliberately different from the rectangular plan of the adjacent housing estate. The emphasis on the local community is a positive, seeking interaction between athletes and park visitors. The pitched roofs, with reference to local architecture, give the hall a pleasing scale, the cut-outs in the massing for the various entrances will be a strong visual element and have interesting spatial potential. The layout is designed clearly, in functional blocks, with a well thought-out movement of athletes and visitors, with logical placement of all entrances. The structural design of the hall is easy to understand and we positively evaluate the use of prefabricated wooden and concrete elements. The energy concept of the building is also detailed with an emphasis on sustainability. In this respect, the design is the most sophisticated of all, and also provides for international certification. The design of the hall is so strongly linked to the surrounding park that the construction of the hall is difficult to imagine without the simultaneous implementation of the surrounding new landscape. It is recommended that the pedestrian and vehicle connectivity of the edges of the site to the surrounding urban fabric be considered. We see a risk in the location of the large car park on the city street Volyňských Čechů - it forms a barrier. We recommend rethinking the material of the external cladding in relation to local climatic conditions, durability and maintenance. We draw the attention of the contest team to, in our opinion, underestimated construction costs.

URBANITY: To grow into the current urban fabric by maximizing the connection of the ground floor in all directions. Define a fixed point and new subspaces in the decayed urban structure. To allow functioning at the edge and within the settlement unit after its expected further development. TRANSPARENCY: Not to hide the pulse of life within the building. By revealing the agency to animate the place, to initiate activity and the desire to join in. To lighten the mass with distant vistas. BARRIERLESS: Completely service the premises on one platform. Visually connect indoor and outdoor public spaces. FORM: To create a clearly legible public building, unobtrusive yet distinctive.

Urbanistically, the building faces Volyňských Čechů Street, which was positively evaluated by the jury also with regard to the sufficiently large dispersion area and the representative entrance to the building, which is oriented approximately in the middle of the layout. The entrance to the building connects seamlessly to the street and a possible bus stop, which should be close to the hall. The study also considers a park and other areas for future development. The architectural perception of the building is very positive, calming. The author symbolically reflects the red earth, which is an important soil for hop growing in Žatecko region, into the lower ground floor. The green roofs of the lower ground floor and the climbing plants on the façade also add value, further softening the building's mass. The operation of the building is very well laid out, starting with a representative foyer with the possibility of dispersing people to three sides, the operation of the trainees does not interfere with the movement of visitors. We appreciate the direct entrance from the foyer to the grandstand, elevated grandstand, which creates a natural boundary. The design addresses sufficient space for storage of sports equipment, including ample surface area for changing facilities. The layout of the building accommodates, amongst other things, direct access from the changing rooms to the pitch located externally, with further provision for tempered storage and direct access to the sanitary facilities. Based on such a detailed layout, the jury believed that the designers had indeed worked with information from hall users in other cities. We also see the accessibility as positive. We consider the daylighting of the hall along the attic to be ingenious.

An important theme of the proposed hall is its involvement in the organism of the city as a whole and its integration into the ambiguous context of its surroundings. For this reason, the hall is positioned to create clearly defined public spaces together with the outdoor playground and, by being slightly recessed into the ground, to connect as much as possible with its surroundings, the street and the rest of the sports complex. The hall as a worthy calling card of the city of Žatec, an open hall, communicating with the surroundings, inviting athletes and visitors inside. A building with a civil and economical concept on the one hand and a building with an emphasis on elegance, overall harmony and structural beauty on the other. A noble ordinariness as a basic characteristic. The part of the building that is embedded in the ground is a symbolic reference to the place where it stands and with which it is firmly connected. The sports area and the stands are sunken into the red-brown "soil" as a reminiscence of the soil of the surrounding landscape, which is specific and unique to Žatec. This is what the new municipal sports hall wants to be.

The compact volume in a stereotome mass is correctly situated to the road, with an adjacent parking area to the rear and a forward awning towards the town. The layout is clear, almost trivial, but leaves half the site for a reserve. The greatest quality is the sports character of the building, manifested in the clear vertical division of the public space above the terrain and the placement of athletes below the terrain, in mutual visual interconnection. This solution is most in line with the jury's idea of sport. The clear operational scheme is complemented by a subtle steel structure and simple trapezoidal cladding. However, these lend the hall the industrial character that has been criticised. The hall does not fully reflect the promoter's idea of a distinctive signal at the entrance to the city, its character suggesting a suburban, service house.

An event, a silhouette, a new gateway to the city of Zatec. This is how the new sports hall arises attached to its origins but proposing new connections to the city, to the landscape that surrounds it and most of all to its inhabitants. The new Zatec sports hall is composed of 3 main elements: a semi-buried program, a series of structural timber frameworks and an open and covered outdoor space forming a new centrality and a new public square in the city. The new equipment settles into the landscape in a subtle way with a controlled height, but the expressive silhouette of its structural timber frameworks allows the building to be easily recognizable. A project with 5 main facades that proposes a new landscape at the entrance of Zatec.

The design works with the motif of a timber-framed structure typical of the historic buildings of the site. The roofscape consists of a prominent sawtooth roof with dormers, set back from its surroundings by a lightweight transparent parterre. The undulating meadow greenery penetrates the interior of the building and visually connects the building to its surroundings in a pleasing way. The distinctive mass of the roof is a clear identifying feature on arrival. Its morphology contrasts favourably with the adjacent prefabricated buildings and creates a visual transition to the lower family housing situated to the right. The jury appreciates the distinctive qualities of the architectural concept: the space of the recessed sports hall with a raftered ceiling structure, the clear and distinctive morphology supporting the horizontality of the surrounding landscape and the loose concept of the surrounding greenery penetrating the airy ground floor inside the building. The building beckons you inside to its wavy organic and cosy interior. The jury criticises the very low ground floor height and the relatively large underground location of the sports ground (economic and groundwater). The height of the ceiling above the sports field is not consistently in line with the brief for the whole area of the field.

The shape of the hall is based on operational needs, the generous height requirement of 12.5 m is projected exactly where it is needed - only above the sports field itself. This space is the heart of the hall, encompassing the lower ring of stands, accommodation and foyer. This makes the hall archetypally out of step with the indoor spaces that often line the boundaries of settlements - large-scale warehouses, a very important theme, particularly in the context of the site. The archetype of an elevated centre with a low edge elevates the house above a mere hall; it is a temple of sport. The spiritual subtext of this archetype is so strong that we felt the need to bring the house back down to earth, to civilize it a little. That's why we designed the envelope on the ground floor, the areas in close contact with the pedestrians, in a simple but true material - concrete blocks with embedded thermal insulation. Apart from its sheer truthfulness, this material has another great advantage, and that is the much needed detail that gives the buildings a human scale. It does not need to be plastered, it is cheap and a little rough. The heart of the hall - the sports field area - is designed in contrast to the base, which the internal traffic also truthfully admits. The façade of the elevated section is made up of system polycarbonate panels with the possibility of underlighting at times of major events.

The jury appreciates the architectural quality of the proposal. The temple of sport refers to the classical architectural tradition in its composition and design. The tectonics of the building is clearly legible in the interior, elevating ordinary, commonly used materials to refined, almost luxurious surfaces. The design becomes a visual experience, creating a sophisticated environment that has great potential for multi-purpose, sporting and cultural use of the building.