Landscape, environmental respect and context enhancement are the three key concepts of the project for Fiorentina’s new Sports Center called “Viola Park.” It is an area of extraordinary naturalistic value where for the first time players of the youth teams, women’s teams and the men’s first team will be able to devote themselves to sports and study according to an innovative “Campus” where different “Genders and Generations” meet in the name of sports.
The area of Bagno a Ripoli that concludes the plain of the Arno to the south presents optimal environmental characteristics to settle a low-density activity and reduced environmental impact that, stretching over a land of more than 26 hectares, mediates the relationship between city and countryside in an assembly dedicated to sports, particularly soccer, where the training fields realize large green spaces surrounded by a system of trees that follows in layout and orientation the traces of the pre-existing agrarian mesh and therefore of the centuriation of Roman origin. More than 90 percent of the area will remain green and more than 1,200 trees will be planted.
The Sports Center will also feature two fields with stands, one of which has a capacity of about 3,000 seats called the “Main arena” dedicated to women’s and spring league matches. From the point of view of architectural image, the buildings will all be characterized by a low profile, at most ground floor and first floor, while some pavilions will also have basement floors nevertheless endowed with natural light as a result of excavations made in the longitudinal direction of the building body so as to make all rooms healthy and bright and at the same time limit the height of the buildings as much as possible, respecting the historical or historic architectural emergencies in the immediate vicinity.
Materials will be natural and marked by the lowest possible environmental impact, veering toward a general sense of lightness aimed at eliminating masonry elements. Each new pavilion, with the exception of the historic “Villa Viola,” features slender exposed metal structures made of corten steel so as to blend in with the brown tones of the tree trunks and the earth, glazed fields relate the interior to the extraordinary nature of the surrounding landscape while roofs covered with photovoltaic panels in shades of green are designed to collect rainwater and meet the energy needs of the entire sports center.

Marco Casamonti