Community centre in Modrice

Location Modrice, Czech Republic

Client / operator City of Modrice

Architect & Principal Designer Atelier bod architekti s.r.o. CZ – 170 00 Prague www.bodarchitekti.cz

Author bod architekti

Photos Tomáš Slavík Jan Alexander Bednár

Official opening 2020

THREE TIMES ONE

COMMUNITY CENTRE IN MODRICE

Modrice is a suburb of Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic. This is where a community centre with a triple sports hall, gymnastics room, swimming pool and guest room has been built. By embedding the sports hall halfway into the ground, the new building docks unobtrusively onto a historical building.

Modrice has the appearance typical of a small town; the houses in Benešova street are one or two storeys high, and a few have three storeys. The newly built sports complex takes its cue from the height of the surrounding buildings, even though the hall has headroom of between 9 and 11 m, which is the height of a threestorey building.

The hall is located at the very edge of the site between the railway line and the primary school. This way, the sports hall serves as a kind of noise barrier without affecting the lighting conditions in the classrooms.

The restaurant is now accommodated in the restored old building – as a reminder of the building‘s history. The sports complex has the ambition and potential to become a meeting place for the local community. The architecture of the building therefore seeks to communicate solidity, integrity and tranquillity, and the building is therefore designed as a calm edifice standing firmly on the ground.

Harmony between buildings old and new The parts of the new building are modelled on the form of the historical building; their origin is even underlined by multiple repetition. At the same time, no new physical form has been created that could seem alien to or incongruous with the historical building. The façade facing the street is supplemented with the replication of the original building’s volume. The result is a building with the main entrance as the sole opening on the street side. The spatial concept is consistent with the surrounding buildings. The hall‘s large volume is mitigated by its subdivision into three equal-sized units. The subdivision of the building envelope is replicated in the division of the interior spaces. The large hall includes a large space for sports activities that can be split into three playing areas (for football or volleyball, for example).

The sports hall floor is 2.5 m lower than the entrance to the foyer. This reduces the overall height of the building above ground level, improves the building‘s thermal footprint and brings the height of the new structure into line with that of the original building.

The entrance area is the complex’s hub The activities of the large sports hall are directly visible through a glazed frontage. From the foyer, users can access the gallery overlooking the sports hall and from there the changing rooms, gym and outdoor pitches.

Also from the foyer, stairs lead down to the building‘s functional area containing further changing rooms and to the swimming pool. The basement is directly connected to the primary school by an underground corridor, as use of the swimming pool is reserved primarily for pupils.

The roof frame of the large hall is made of steel and clad with acoustic panels. The spacious skylights admit plenty of daylight. Wood is the dominant material for the sports flooring and the acoustic wall cladding, while the walls are otherwise made of concrete.

The renovation of the façade of the historical building was based on photographs taken at the beginning of the 20th century. The façade of the new part of the building takes up this formal language with its horizontal lines.

1 Historical building 2 Triple sports hall 3 Changing rooms 4 Swimming pool

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