Drawing Board: Dalian Yifang F.C. Soccer Academy

DALIAN YIFANG F.C SOCCER ACADEMY

Dalian, China

Cruz y Arquitectos, the Spanish architects behind Atletico Madrid’s

impressive Wanda Metropolitano, has revealed its design plans for a new soccer academy / training centre for Chinese Super League side, Dalian Yifang F.C. The plans for the new 145,000sq ft complex include 18 full-size football pitches and two seven-a-side pitches, as well as six multi-storey buildings that will line the site - complete with glass fronts - for the team facilities. Communicating through its media release, Cruz y Ortis Arquitectos said: “The purpose, from the beginning, has been to integrate the playing fields, its lighting towers and all the buildings of the training centre, creating this way a sequenced and recognisable set that, incorporating all these elements, is able to generate a new harmonious, exact and integrated landscape. “We are not in favour of opting for a solution by accumulation, in which the aforementioned elements find a relative position more or less ordered or hazardous and avoiding the simple juxtaposition of independent elements, that is one of our first purposes. “Our proposal aims to provide unity of landscape and geometric coherence to the whole.”

The facilities for the football club include separate building for the first team, reserve team and youth teams. There is a club office and logistics centre, too, all of which overlook the training ground. The buildings are specifically arranged in a symbolic way, taking players on the same path that they will take on their journey from the youth team right through to the first team. “The line-positioned buildings form an aspirational pathway through the platform. It starts in the junior team’s pavilion, located in the lowest part of the plot, moving up the small gradient towards the highest point where the first team building is located, the pinnacle of their football career,” the Cruz y Arquitectos press release explained.