Transition between a natural and urban environment. Soccer stadium "El Plantío" by Israel Alba Estudio

Description of project by Israel Alba Estudio

The stadium is located next to the Arlanzón River and La Quinta Park, in the south side, and it integrates inside the sports area called “El Plantío” formed by diverse public facilities, that runs parallel to this extraordinary natural surroundings as a part of the city. An exceptional place of low density; a context that permits to understand the necessity to open up the stadium and to intensify its connections, extending the public spaces to improve the connectivity and the accessibility.

 It is a project about civic vocation and urban relation, simultaneously with the river, the park and the city, with an appropriate scale to highlight the importance of the natural landscape, where the trees prevail over the built. In this way, the south facade emphasises the horizontality and the abstraction of the project, through the large window that highlights the importance of the place connecting the stands with the city and the river. 

The building responds, simultaneously, to the fact of representation, an attribute that nowadays is supposed to this type of facilities, with certain iconic values for the city. More than an infraestructure, it is a building that, in such context, must go behind dialogue and integration. The big scale that inevitably comes from the structure is hidden inisde the limits of the enclosure, which is divided into two parts, both made in aluminium. 

The lower one as a smooth black plinth, integrating all the access gates to the stadium and gettting lighten in the transparent corners where the commercial spaces are located, completed by a canopy made of the same material to protect the football fans from the rain and the sun. This plinth is connected with the city and the close scale. The upper one, as a white section of vertical condition, that presents soft shapes, more natural and smooth, looks for the relationship with the landscape and with the medium scale. The geometry of the upper curved shapes responds to two issues: one, the landscape and, the other, the technique, considering that the bend permits to reduce the quantity of material to reach the required rigidity and strenght of the whole. The wind conditions of the environment recommended to replace the perforated pieces initially planned, that were slightly separated, by smooth and continuous ones. This solution, besides creating a rich dialogue full of hues and relationships between the inside and the outside, believes in turning the stadium into a regular building of the city, large scale, but with a wish of integration.

Inside, a hallway for perimeter circulation in the shape of a ring, unifies the whole stadium providing the flexibility and the accessibility required, organizes the separation of the stands into an upper side and a lower side, while because of its dimensions it becomes into a public space for interacting, on one hand, for the football fans and, on the other, for the stadium with its environment which establishes a new relationship with the city through the south facade looking out the river.

The structure, made of precast reinforced concrete elements for a quick on-site construction, is solved with a grid of columns and girders every 7,20m to optimize the benefits of the construction system. The stands and the stairs are also made of precast reinforced concrete elements. The roof, with the same modulation, is built with a large-scale steel structure made of cantilever trusses.

All previously described results in the idea of achieving a well-balanced use of resources in the construction of the building, including all the details, which become more visible by their absence. Construction materials are outlined occupying complete surfaces. These materials, a few and industrialized (precast concrete, aluminium and glass), all of which allow a quick and effective assembly, they also make possible to reduce the construction costs. 

The stadium sits in the transition between the natural and the urban and must reaffirm its condition and its public scale. At the end, a white box brings up an architecture issue: the intensification of the urban condition as a response to the environment.