Located in a natural environment, this running track allows to emphasize the existing landscape values and bring nature to athletics..
The track designed by RCR is implanted in a forest clearing sessile oak. Contiguous forest, distant forest and away forest are the relationships established between the track and the forest, enhancing the stands and small terraces or slopes between clear. Their equipment, and contain functional dependencies, interacts with the extension of the walls, slopes and ramps that formalizes the slope from access to the runway; It is the big door that goes to the races, filter between urban and nature.
 

Description of the project by RCR Arquitectes

In the border city - natural park along the river, is one area called Tussols-Basil designed by us as an area for leisure and sport as architectural response between natural and artificial city park. Right now we have built part of a road, the bathing pavilion, Hall 2 × 1 and a running track.

The place was two clearings of sessile oak separated by a lava stream. The large size of an athletic track offered great difficulties for placement. We decided to think again, and openly, how to work a runway and return to running man and nature.
The forest made the track space could be perceived. The project live in great confrontations among athletes on one side and environmentalists on the other. The first did not want any tree, the latter do not want any tree was felled.

The intermediate shafts are filters that change with the seasons. From an opaque or translucent one semi-transparent filter. There is something else in the distance, if we, after the intuition, the space opens up. The clearing in the forest of oaks, formerly cultivated field, now becomes positive space that transcends its boundaries.

The lights, which lookouts are attentive and among the thick trunks emerge. The slope and small terraces perform topographical adaptation and serve the public. Towers and establish dialogue references in space.

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Architects
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RCR - Rafael Aranda - Carme Pigem - Ramon Vilalta, Arquitectes
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Collaborators
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M.Tàpies, A.Sáez. M.Bordas-Brufau, Obiol, Moya
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Area
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67.693 sqm
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Client
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Ajuntament d'Olot / Consell Català de l'Esport, Generalitat de Catalunya
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Project date
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1991
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Built date
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1999-2001
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Photography
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Rafael Aranda, Carme Pigem and Ramon Vilalta, work together since 1988 under the name RCR ARQUITECTES in Olot. They are Premio Nacional de Cultura en Arquitectura 2005 by Generalitat de Catalunya, Chevaliers de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by Republique Française in 2008, honorary members by the AIA American Institute of Architecture 2010 and International Award 2011 "Belgian Building Awards". Since 1989 are architects advisors at Parque Natural de la Zona Volcánica de la Garrotxa and have been teachers of Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture and Project. They have won different international competitions (the latter, the Waalsekrook media library in Belgium, the Soulages museum in France, Hofheide's crematorium in Belgium and The Edge Bussiness Bay in Dubai). They have received awards in his work among which two finalists positions in the awards of the European Union Mies Van der Rohe. Some of their awarded works have been exhibited in different events and published in several monographs.

RCR has shown the ability to think and transform that bring teamwork and the promotion of cultural initiatives from Bunka Foundation and workshops within the LAB-A in the Espacio Barberí, and have proven that it is possible to do international architecture from a rural environment, which is what has stimulated his imagination.

Following the work of RCR there is a philosophy which works for harmony between humans and nature. The most advanced technologies and materials such as steel or glass, with established rhythms and light that acts in opposition to each, are those that allow RCR this return to the essence of space that is the subject of architecture.

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