This Municipal Boxing Gym is a project that responds both to the need of a public amenity and the boxing programming offered to the community in adjacent low-income neighborhoods in the City of Chihuahua.
The gym replaces former improvised spaces provided for training such as residential garages, courtyards and informal open spaces. The container is integrated by stone-faced concrete-brick walls that are rotated seven degrees each from their centerline. This rotation creates a pattern with a connotation to textiles: rough as the skin of a boxer and artistically hand-crafted at once. These qualities leverage the value of this building and encourage the appropriation by the neighbors of this public amenity. Columns and slabs are made of exposed concrete, resulting in a low-maintenance building.
An additional strategy aims to develop a complementary program: a plaza that makes even more public the already public building. Additionally, we added to this design a small retail space to economically support instructors that volunteer at the gym. The plaza is around two-hundred square meters and is protected by a cantilevered structure that provides shade and extends the use of this space even when the gym is closed. The plaza also performs as an extension of the interior space of the building when the doors are open – each one of these four openings of 3.8 by 3.8 meters. Translucent panels above the boxing ring and a hanging box concentrating light provide a dramatic effect on the boxer’s confrontation area; this gesture aims to evoke the old marquees. On the second level, a weightlifting area and a terrace for private training complete the architectural program.
In order to add value to the construction process and leverage the social profile of this project, we invited the photographer Guadalupe Campos to capture construction workers (both masons and foremen), as well as users and coaches. This documentation project aims to acknowledge participants that are usually anonymous. Gimnasio de Box Riberas was shortlisted for the 9th Iberoamerican Architecture Biennale in Rosario, Argentina, 2014.
