The new Noja Hall for Racquet Sports will be incorporated into the existing sports and culture campus of this small holiday town, a campus that borders the Ris Beach, which belongs to a dune system that stretches for several kilometers parallel to the ocean.
Fitting neatly into a tight but regular lot, the new building is set as a single large rectangular object, tangent with the multi-sports space and the bowling alley building, built by Óscar Tusquets in 2007. Becoming part of a compound of independent buildings that add up to form a makeshift still-life of singular sporting types, the new racquet sports hall is proposed as an elaboration of the generic north-facing large-span shed, with long skylights producing an image midway between industrial and domestic in its gable succession. Interior transparency and space, resolved with a lightweight mixed structure of metallic supports and laminated-wood trusses, will celebrate natural light in a neutral way, harboring activities that will range from sports (tennis, paddle, badminton, table tennis, court wall, climbing wall), to local public gatherings such as temporary markets and concerts.
The main volume will be accompanied by a lower piece containing an 80 m. athletics track to the west, and a permanent scaffold-like structure to the south, which climbs upon the existing library building, producing a panoramic terrace with unobstructed views to the sea, and that will house a rooftop bar during the summer months. Like an abstract object swept to the shore, the building will be covered in green zinc panels, whose weathering in such a saline atmosphere will contribute to its anchoring over time to place and memory.
Project: Noja hall for racquet sports
Status: Competition - First Prize (2023) Under development
Client: Noja Town Hall
Location: Noja, Santander, Spain
Team: Jacobo García-Germán, Manuel del Río, Marta Roldán, Raquel Díaz de la Campa, Julia Urzaiz
