Architect sees Malmo sports centre as a 'town within a town'

Copenhagen-based architects Bjarke Ingels Group, or BIG, UK structural and civil engineering firm AKT, Swedish consultant Tyrens and German climate engineer Transsolar have won a design competition in Malmo, Sweden, for a 100,000msq sports facility.

The World Village of Women Sports has been designed to focus on all areas of female sports and will be built to look like a village rather than a sports centre. Each of the individual buildings has sloping roofs and are dotted in and around open spaces and gardens. The streets within the complex have been designed to look and feel like a medieval town.

The main hall is big enough for professional football matches to be played as well as being an appropriate space for concerts, conferences and exhibitions. The design was chosen as the winner out of five entries by a jury including the founder and main financier of the World Village of Women Sports, Kent Widding Persson, co-founder Maarten Hedlund, Malmo architect, Ingemar Graahamn, and architects Mats Jacobson and Cecilia Hansson.

Mats Jacobson said: “BIG's design places great emphasis on architecture tailored to women with an unconstrained atmosphere and a feeling of well-being. The architects see the WVOWS as a town within a town rather than just a sports complex.”

Bjarke Ingels of BIG added: "The sports centre fuses high levels of ambition within public space and private accommodation, living and working, health and recreation, sport and culture. It merges the modern utopianism of the neighbouring Kronprinsen with the intimate scale and specificity of the nearby historical city centre of Malmo."

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