bblab - Ice Rink

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Located in the Río Manzanares fairgrounds of the Madrid municipality of Valdemoro, the Ice Rink takes up a plot bound by other facilities such as a park, a swimming pool and a bullring. The remaining space of the block is occupied by an L-shaped apartment building. Within this context (its position is closely delimited by this group of facilities), the rink adapts to the boundaries of the property and tries to alleviate the sensation of lack of open space between the different amenities of the area. It opens its views along the main south-east / north-west axis while it closes its façade towards the closest housing building.

A single floor concrete volume helps defining the perimeter of the hall through the existing park while its irregular shape stress the interior space narrowing and widening the banks around the skating area.

Material quality is essential to give a certain unity to the different spaces and to insert the adjacent green zones into the building, so that they can breathe through it: the interior of the rink melds into the space of the park by way of a coloured curtain wall while, on the other hand, the greenish hue of the construction sets up a dialogue with the surrounding trees. Chrome-laquered expanded metal with rockwoll infill on one side and metallic perforated flooring panels lacquered in different RAL greens on the interior façade of the concrete volume are the only finish used for the interior so to make the most of the atmospheric conditions that the ice will generate, and thus becomes a sort of perceptive soundbox in which reflections, transparencies and different degrees of brightness interact.