SPORT COURT - architeria.eu

SPORT COURT

Located 16 kilometers from Paris, Sarcelles is part of the banlieu that hurriedly
accommodated the immigrants who arrived at the end of the 50s. With a current population
close to 60,000, Sarcelles consist of a smoll old core and a huge expansion to the south
known as Le grand Ensemble and conceived in 1965 by Jacques Henri-Labourdette.
Paradigm of an urban plan where the urgency of social housing was such that no thought
was given to mitigating the conflicts of coexistence, fifty years after it went up the city is
the scene of confrontations between communities of different belief and has an
unemployment rate nearing 20%.

Sarcellite, the name of the disease that afficts French neighborhoods built in the late 50s,
is name after this minicipality that now is the object of an ambitious urban renewal operation.

Such is the context behind the project of creating cover and access for disabled people
in a multi-sport court of the secondary school of la Tourelle. For the architects, more than
building a roof, the idea is to extract the practice of sport from a school context, where
the dimensions imposed by regulations were not possible, for which reason there could
only be a beginners’ court. The choice of materials is a kind of metaphor on the desire to
reduce the difference between the aspirations of the users and their sport activities on
one hand, and the dominant technical and academic environment on the other.
The structure of laminated wood is diffused within a tube covered with a traslucent
material,that distributes the light homogeneously and does not create strong contrasts
with the wood. Add to this, the graphics of the ground and a double grille at the ends,
tensed in accordance with models of curves and counter-curves that turn them into two
enormous pairs of glasses.

Project data:
> Client: Région Ile de France
> Architects: Emmanuel Combarel, Dominique Marrec
> Collaborators: BETIBA Bureau d’Etudes Techniques
> Main contractors: LAFRANQUE, APLOMB, EVERLITE, XR Systems, Tennis et Sols
> Location: Lycée La Tourelle, Sarcelles, France
> Program: Sport Court
> Gross floor area HON: 1000m²
> Building permit: 2004
> Finished: 2005
> Cost: 400 000€
> Photos: Philippe Ruault