The project deals with the extension and restoration of the existing cafe within Castegnato Sports Centre, a public facility in the small town near Brescia, Italy. Through the intervention the building is made more usable, it’s adapted from a regulatory point of view and made a simple but elegant building, allowing its public function to be perceived istinctively.
The existing volume, built in concrete prefabricated blocks, used as a kitchen and services, is renovated and expanded with a new portion that hosts the new cafe, and with the provision of an exterior space with a similar function but more suitable for summer use.
The current structure is almost entirely preserved. The approach is therefore first of all ecological, as none of the existing building is demolished.
The current building is made of masonry of load-bearing concrete blocks, painted in a pale yellow. The current colour is erased by sandblasting, in order to show the rough appearance of the blocks. Therefore they are not repainted but left exposed.
The extension is structurally joined to the existing one. The walls that are added are also made in exposed concrete blocks, but without load-bearing function. The extension is thermally insulated from the inside. In this way, the existing part and the extension merge into a new building that is unitary, simple, elegant.
The supporting structure of the extension is reduced to the roof, which is in exposed wood, and to the wooden pillars, also exposed, positioned adjacent to the walls made of concrete blocks but separated from them. The wooden structure has also an anti-seismic function for the whole addition, without the need for bracing elements.
Wood is among the materials whose production generates the least CO2, significantly less than concrete or steel. In this sense too, the design choice is based on ecology. Furthermore, such a light roof allows for much smaller and less expensive foundations.
The external patio is protected from the adjacent parking lot by the extension of the new exterior wall of the building, which also allows a direct entry from the parking itself for employees, teams and the public.
From both the building and the external space it’s possible to enjoy the matches and observe the entire Sports Center.
In its simplicity, the new intervention is made so that the elements that make it up are easily identified with the function they perform in the building. The wooden supporting structure is left entirely exposed, the external partitions in concrete blocks appear as such, as well as the finished plasterboard insulation and the windows. Each element, even to the eye, appears to perform the function it is actually thought for.
If truth in construction is perhaps never fully attainable in every part of the building, trying to reach it gives back an order of things that becomes understandable for everyone.
