Sport Architecture

The history of civilisations and places conveys the importance of the role the culture of sport and a cultivated management of leisure play in the definition of the identity of peoples and communities. Elevating such realms to the status of cultural assets to be shared and enhanced by analysing the dynamics of transformation of the city and territory related to them is a sensible, necessary and ethically correct action. The context of European architecture shows an increasing number of plans that both transform existing facilities and create new ones with a defining and strategic role in the development of urban and landscape fabrics. Activating a basic and permanent theoretical discussion is a fundamental and strategic action for the credibility and professional values of a sector that powerfully conveys the need to update and retrain its technical, executive and managerial personnel through a renewed cultural approach. The goal of this book is promoting awareness about the design enhancement of sport infrastructures as collective assets capable of developing identity and citizenship, through the analysis of both physical and immaterial factors and of the personnel charged with their conception, construction and management. Within contemporary architecture, the design of facilities for sport practice provides an extraordinary opportunity for the adaptation and strategic re-evaluation of the environment and its paradigmatic places. At the same time, sport infrastructures provide a crucial opportunity for architectural, design and technological experimentation – exploring their core features and enhance their potential is the main goal of this book.