The WAF shortlist: a natural sports centre and a wooden luxury suite lodge

21 August 2019 Sustainable construction

This week, we highlight two more projects shortlisted for the World Architecture Festival’s Best Use of Certified Timber Prize, supported by PEFC: A sports centre that gets its warm and friendly feel thanks to wood, and a luxury suite lodge that is protected by an undulating timber roof.

Turó de la Peira’s Sports Centre – Arquitectura Anna Noguera

Turó de la Peira’s Sports Centre is located in a residential area in Barcelona, Spain, and consists of a swimming pool and a sports court.

Concentrating the two facilities in a single building made space for a garden, which has become a place of social gatherings. A gallery of plants surrounds the building, protecting it from the sun.

The project places special emphasis on the sensations it transmits to its users. The natural lighting, the vegetation and the use of wood provide a warm atmosphere, away from the coldness of other similar facilities.

Wood is present throughout the building. In the pool, the warm colour of the wooden beams contrasts with the freshness of the water. On the sports court almost everything is made of wood, including pillars, beams, stands, walls, and floor parquet. The timber’s colour and texture is highlighted by natural light coming through the façades and the ceiling skylights. From the court, visitors can see the gallery of plants, enjoying its flowering changes according to the time of the year.

Lindis Lodge – architecture workshop 

Lindis Lodge is a five-bedroom luxury suite lodge located in a glacial valley in the Alps of New Zealand.

The architects drew inspiration from the vastly scaled glacial landscape, blending the building into the land to make it an attribute of the site.

Supplied by Big River Group and Carter Holt Harvey, certified timber plays a key role in the building.

The large timber roof protects the interior from the extreme climate, ranging from 35 degrees in summer to minus 16 degrees with regular severe winds in winter. The undulating grid shell roof is covered in a rain screen of long hardwood timber boards, strong enough for the snow loads that cover the area in winter.

The building has a hydronic underfloor heating system, laid directly under the engineered timber flooring. Heating and domestic hot water is provided by a geothermal heat pump system completed with a ground source collector field.

With considerable style, Lindis Lodge brings the visitors closer to the vastness of the surrounding landscape, while respecting nature and the history of the site.

The Best Use of Certified Timber Prize, supported by PEFC

For the second time, the World Architecture Festival and PEFC will award the Best Use of Certified Timber Prize, recognising architects for using certified timber as a main construction material for buildings outstanding in sustainability, innovation, quality or aesthetics.

39 architects from 18 countries entered their projects into the prize. The jury will choose the winner at the WAF in Amsterdam, on 6 December 2019.

Photo credits: Arquitectura Anna Noguera - Enric Duch, architecture workshop - Patrick Reynolds Photography