Architecture Design of Annemasse Aquatic Center by Serero Architectes

March 17, 2010 · Posted in Architecture · Comment

Architecture Design of Annemasse Aquatic Center

Urban Strategy

Starting from the idea that the architectural skin of a building has an important impact on the environment, the entire building and its extension will be isolated externally, in order to prevent heat loss and to increase the building thermal inertia.

Our project for the aquatic center in Annemasse was part of a process which aimed to:

Develop innovative and efficient solutions for the pool roof to limit its visual impact with high level of comfort.
Take advantage of the building construction to develop an urban project, where building spaces, people and vehicles flows are coherent. This will increase quality of urban spaces, with the creation of vegetation zones in surroundings and parking lots.

A Translucent Wooden Shell

We covered the 50m pool with a highly transparent roof, with double curvature geometry. The roof volumetry is conceived to limit shadows impact on the green beaches around the pool.

This roof works like a light shell, without any intermediate posts. It’s shape, based on an “hyperbolic paraboloid”, limits shear stress in its surface and therefore reduces structural components section size. Despite its apparent complexity, all the generative lines of the shell are straight lines which guarantee a precise and simple implementation. This vault is made of laminated spruce timber from 35 to 60cm high. These elements are connected to each other by steel plates linked to wooden nodes, which are CNC milled.

A “Smart” Skin Of Etfe Pillows

We have placed natural light at the heart of the sport complex spaces by working on a system of ETFE pillows to cover the 50 meters pool. These pillows are double cell lenses filled up with compressed air. They diffused continuously light to the entire aquatic centre. They integrate a light control device composed by the superimposition of the ETFE layers. The internal layers of the pillow are printed with two positive and negative patterns, which by the change of air pressure in the pillow create opacity and transparency.

The new and existing facades on the entire building will also be covered with wooden horizontal sun-shading, whose rhythm will be adjusted depending on the orientation and the function of the spaces.

Project: Annemasse Aquatic Center (Restricted competition)
Site: Annemasse (74), France
Client: Ville d’Annemasse
Floor Area: 5400 m2 + 14000 m2 exteriors
Construction cost: 9900000 € H.T.
Design Team: SERERO Architects Urban planners: David Serero, Yoichi Ozawa, Fabrice Zaini
Structural Engineers: GINGER Engineering, Mechanical Engineers: ETHIS, Acoustician: Pierre Pasquini, Project Economist: SOUBEYRAN, Local Architect: Franck Baffie