The Damm Sports City is located on the Montjuïc mountain complex just below the Olympic ring and on the boundary with the Marina de Port neighbourhood in Barcelona.
The Special Urban Development Plan drawn up prior to the architectural proposal defines the regulatory perimeters of the buildings, the position of the football pitches, as well as other parameters that have conditioned the different decisions of the project.
The programme is organised by referring to theoretical rings that represent the geometry of the football stadium. These and the parabolic curve drawn by a ball after a perfect shot allow us to establish a dialogue between buildings and guide us in the formalisation of the buildings in order to integrate them into the circulations of the complex, as well as adapting them to the natural environment.
The Damm Sports City has two pitches, one of which can be divided into two and two buildings. The main building, already existing, has been extended and refurbished to accommodate the Club's offices, medical services, gymnasium, changing rooms for the main pitch in the basement plan and a study room to provide continuity to the academic training of the players.
The second building, located between the two football pitches, has changing rooms, the stands for the audience and the restaurant area. This building is divided in half to give continuity to the general circulations of the complex, to be able to have a programme under the stands and to achieve a double stand, one for each pitch.
The proposal takes advantage of the potential of the surroundings, making the presence of nature an added value in the whole sports complex. The project aims to be a model of integration between sport, nature and architecture. The buildings have been designed to integrate with the environment, being ‘nature’ buildings, which incorporate this element as if it were another material.
The project is CO2 emission-free. Using sustainability and energy efficiency criteria, a ‘Nearly Zero Energy Building’ complex has been designed that is energy self-sufficient. Through the aerothermal system that uses CO2, it has a much lower impact on the greenhouse effect and allows optimising the use of the equipment. The photovoltaic installation helps to reduce the electricity consumption of the complex.
To reduce water consumption, the complex has various tanks for collecting rainwater and systems for reusing water from the showers, which can be used for irrigation and maintenance of the football pitches.
The excavation surpluses necessary to create the large football pitch platforms are part of the project's intelligence. Following the guidelines of the ring-shaped organisation, the remaining land is repositioned to form new topographies and areas for rainwater infiltration and drainage.
One of the innovations within the project and certainly in the world of sport has been the use of corn pineapple mashing (natural and biodegradable material) for the infill of the artificial turf pitches, leaving definitively the use of plastics for this type of surfaces.
The project has taken into account the functional diversity of the population at all times. A fully accessible route has been designed from the different accesses from the street to any point of activity in the complex. The Gradas building has an important function in the connection of the different routes of the complex, as the ground floor of this building is liberated from the programme in its central part, being one more path within the whole of the facility.
