Rooftop Sports

Since coming across some examples of sports pitches and courts on top of rooftops I have come across many more examples. A lot of the rooftop pitches I have found have been in a number of countries across the world but I am yet to find an example of this being used in the U.K

 














These are pictures of two 11 a-side on the rooftop of a building in Miami. One visual impact that all these rooftop pitches have is that from a distance it might just appear to be a green roof. I think this has a big visual impact in location where there is little or no green space, in areas where it is usually just standard high rise buildings.

Site Views

These are some of the potential views that could be seen from the leisure centre and the rooftop pitch. 

Fala Park Leisure Centre

Fala Park is the leisure centre that I came across which had tennis courts on its roof.

The centre was designed by PL Architekci and is located in Poland. The tennis courts were located on the roof due to the lack of room. Not only was it a great space saver but it was also seen as an opportunity to take advantages of the panoramic views the vantage point from the roof would give.

With the location of my site being in the city centre of Nottingham providing some sort of rooftop facility would be an ideal as space is very limited. I will propose to have an 3G football pitch on the top of my leisure centre. This will provide a unique setting for playing football and I feel create a real buzz and excitement for the user.

http://www.archdaily.com/280739/fala-park-pl-architekci/

Rooftop Sports

When looking at some precedents for leisure centres I came across a leisure centre in Poland where due to lack of space the constructed there tennis courts on top of the roof. I decided to have a look at some examples of where sports facilities have been put on roof.

The reason I want to look at this is because I am potentially proposing to provide some roof top artificial pitches.

Car Parks

I also noticed that all of the car park are very old and not very pleasing to the eye. The new development could offer the opportunity for refurbishment or new cladding on the car park to improve its look.

Car Parks?

Ideas for my major study project are starting to come along but I am yet to fully decide on a final site location. With the idea of building in the city centre of Nottingham comes the issue of space. As with most city centres space is very limited and I am proposing the development of a leisure centre which usually requires a large area. 

Which this issue I started to think about how I could potentially build vertically, knowing it has been done with gyms in city centres before where facilities have been provided over a number of levels. Today I walked past the Arnedale car park, this got me thinking maybe I don't need a open piece of land maybe there is a potential to construct on top of a building or car park? 

I decided to go round Nottingham city centre and look at all of the car parks. As you can imagine all of these car parks are located in prime locations in the centre of the city.

Broadmarsh Car Park

Broadmarsh car park is located above the Broadmarsh bus station. This is the biggest of all the car parks I looked at.

 

Lace Market Car Park

This car park in located on Fletcher Gate Road and again is in a great central location in the city. From first thoughts I feel that this car park might be slightly to narrow to accommodate a reasonable sized multi-court sport hall.

Arndale Car Park

The Arndale car park is located near the boardmarsh car park. This is a more suitable size from my initial thoughts. Again it does appear to be very narrow and could be a challenge.

One feature that makes this car park stand out from the rest is the fact that there is areas around the car park that could be used for vertical circulation and other uses. Most of the other car parks that I looked at were fully surrounded by other buildings and road leaving little room to construct outside of the car parks total floor area.

Crown Plaza Car Park

Mount Street Car Park

Along with the Arndale car park the Mount Street car park seems to be a suitable size for a good sized sporting facility. The Mount Street car park is more of a square shape so I am leaning more towards choosing this car park but I am still unsure. 

Nottingham Leisure Centres

Couple of weeks ago I went around Nottingham looking for potential sites. When I located a possible site near to Victoria Leisure I went and asked what sort of facilities they had. The facilities were relatively limited. I decided to research into the facilities that Nottingham currently had to offer.

The Nottingham city council website currently has 10 leisure centres listed on its website. I looked at the location of all of these centres and found that only one of these currently had a NG1 postcode.

The Victoria Centre is the only one with an NG1 postcode but as I earlier mentioned I didn't feel that they had a great amount of facilities to cater for a variaty of sports.

The facilities provided include:

• 70 station gym
• 25m swimming pool
• sauna and steam room
• multi-activity studio

Apart from swimming there isn't really any other space for any sports. I think there is a opportunity to provide facilities in an NG1 postcode, facilities such as a multi-sport hall, squash courts and football pitches. The centre I propose will provide facilities and opportunity to play a number of sports at a variety of levels whether it be just participating in sport or at a professional level.

Sport Participation

Continuing with my research I came across some interesting figures from the sports England website. Every year the Active People Survey measures participation in sport across the country. The results from the Active Survey 6 shows that there is an steady increase in sports across the country.

The figures only support the fact that I feel that there needs to be an increase in sporting facilities to support the increase in participation. Regional figures also show that there is an increase in the East Midlands.

Potential Site

Having discussed some possible research areas with my tutors I have decided that I will look at how I can bring sporting facilities into a urban environment such as Nottingham city centre.

Today I walked around the city of Nottingham looking for any potential spaces that I could look to build.

Bath Street is the potential site that I found most interesting. The site is an old market that is now used as storage but there does appear to be a number of units that have been neglected and the area as a result looks run down and in poor condition. This site is located close to the Victoria leisure centre so is in an area that I feel is close enough to the city centre.

Although it would potentially be next to an already existing leisure centre, the Victoria Centres facilities I feel are very limited and don't provide opportunity for a great deal of sport.

Another interesting bit of land that I came across is the area located near Manvers Street. This piece of land is a brownfield site and is known as "the island". The site is very open and provides plenty of space for the potential development of sporting facilities, my only problem is that I feel that the location isn't close enough to the city centre and doesn't offer much of a challenge in terms of developing sporting facilities in a tight urban area.

Bringing Sport to Deprived Urban Areas

Another potential area within sports that I have been looking at is how to bring sport to the deprived areas of city centres. Currently there is not a great amount of sporting facilities in less wealthy parts of  large cities such as in London. Schemes such as Street Games and Inspired Facilities are already working to improve this. 

Something that I think I will explore further is how through architecture and good design I could provide better facilities in urban areas where currently there is little or no sporting opportunity.

http://www.streetgames.org/

Major Study Project

In recent weeks we have been asked to start to think about a potential topic and area of research that we would like to look at for our final project. I currently have to major passions in my life one being architecture and the other being sports. With this is mind I decided to try and choose a topic in the area of sporting architecture.

A first initial thought of mine was to look at urban regeneration and the effects that sport can have of this. This is something that I had recently looked at earlier on in the year and can be found in the research methods section. Back then I looked at how the development of a sports stadium or facility could provide the opportunity for other social spaces too be built such as shopping centres and restaurants.

Moving forward from this I have recently looked at how a sporting event can have an affect as well. In cases such as the Barcelona summer Olympics and London 2012, these event were seen as opportunities to redevelop some areas where new facilities where being built.

 

The Strafford area of East London is a prime example of redevelopment in an area due to sports. With this in mind is there an opportunity to do this in other cities such  as Nottingham.