CLUBS + HOTELS
Sports Complex Thailand
In a country with no olympic tennis training facilities, the civic-minded Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand sought to build a world class sports complex with a focus on both tennis and soccer. Given the site’s vast depth and industrial location, the design explores unique opportunities for public engagement and relief to the massive scale of the program. This state of the art development is an interplay of dancing arches that break down the scale and landscaped berms that provide much needed green space to the existing built environment.
Functionally, the program is divided into three basic elements – a central clubhouse bookended by a tennis complex on one side and a FIFA soccer stadium on the other. Above the clubhouse are basketball and futsal courts. Within the tennis complex is a performance court also with stadium seating. To keep the design column-free, the arches are structural and combined with a space frame truss below to suspend the buildings like a harness. Visually, they become the connective tissue between the functional elements.
One of the key objectives was to screen the large parking area at ground level. The design articulates landscape berms to ebb and flow in and out of shade along the length of the complex, ultimately opening to a park and recreational riverwalk. Designed with dual purpose, the rear parkland is also sloped to invite public spectating of the soccer games.
