Sports Park

Sports Park Bressanone Millan

Topography-Landscape-Architecture

At the edges of Bressanone, the combed topography of the Isarco Valley is a stepped condition of undulating, low-lying retaining walls that make for a beautifully efficient, remarkably dense and variegated landscape of meadows, woods, agriculture (/cultivation) and settlements.  Reciprocal but separate, this evocative relationship between topography, landscape and architecture underpins the design ethos of the project.

Sports Park as a Public Park for all

The proposal conceives of the new Sport- und Freizeitpark of Brixen Milland as a public park designed to form strong relationships between people, landscape and architecture.  A grid of connective, outdoor axes determines the position of the large sports facilities on the site, and most importantly taps into the city’s infrastructure of (existing and planned) roads, bike routes and pathways (Wegführung) to make for a highly permeable site, accessible to all ages from both near and far.

Albeit clearly defined, the ordering grid of the scheme is not a geometrical grid but rather a loose matrix of north-south and east-west intertwining relationships.  A crisscrossing of paths forms an interconnected array of differentiated spaces able to weave together the structured sports activities of the given program (football, tennis, yoseikan budo, artistic gymnastics, ice-skating, and ice-hockey) with the more informal, less determinate recreational activities and spontaneous social encounters that enrich and connote the public realm.  The design of the park thereby responds both to the specific needs of the athletes and spectators while also affording an open-ended mixture of active and contemplative experiences for residents and visitors.

The modeling of the ground through gentle slopes and controlled terracing, together with the stacking of functional programs in section, work towards an integrated, topographical solution that minimizes the visual impact of the intervention and mediates the 00m change in grade from the Isarco riverside to Milland at the level of Sarnser street (Sarnserstrasse).  By positioning the voluminous sports programs within the interstitial space of the slope, the groundscape is freed up, thereby allowing for larger tree species to be planted.  Vehicular access and all of the parking is relegated either to the borders of the site or below grade, which, when combined together with the activation of the tennis, ice-hockey and yoseikan budo rooftops, allows for the whole site to be given over to the community as an open park.

.

Millan – Bressanone (BZ), 2022