Bonus Track
Elda 3D Stadium
Boring
The design of an athletics facility is actually as boring as it is standardised and predictable as its subsequent use: curve, straight, curve, straight – as long as you want. Perfectly standardized sports architecture is as universal as little else: the track is thus 400 metres long, the bend radius is 36.5 metres and the lane width 1.22 metres. Same in Elda, a city with 55,000 inhabitants northwest of Alicante.
Elda stadium meets all these criteria, but adds a spectacular innovation to the range of sports facilities on offer: a “Bonus Track”. The Spanish architects of subarquitectura (Alicante) added six six extra lanes that branch off behind and above the stand at the beginning of the straight and rejoin the straight at the far end of the stand.
Great gesture
This grand design gesture is also functionally plausible: the additional lanes form a roof over the curved changing room area and form the rear demarcation of a small grandstand with a capacity of 300 spectators. In addition to the two changing rooms, the 350 m² area also includes office and storage rooms, a multipurpose room and spectator toilets. The consistent avoidance of elaborate materials and details – the façade design is reduced to a sheet steel grid with a band of windows – underlines the bold attitude of the planners.
Architect
Subarquitectura
Team
Andrés Silanes, Fernando Valderrama, Carlos Bañón
Client
City of Elda
Photograph
David Frutos Ruiz
Subarquitectura
Author
Johannes Bühlbecker
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Site plans
Accessible for everyone
Facility access and use of Elda stadium are barrier-free. Visitors and athletes enter the changing rooms and the interior through the ground floor tunnel. Tracks and inclines are designed to be suitable for wheelchair users.
Great everyday life
Elda stadium raises the standardised athletics competition area to the third dimension. At the same time, viewers are moving into a new, central position. This solution may be hard to realize for large competitions with many spectators, but it is a great impulse for the much more frequent daily sporting activities.
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