Car Park and Sports Hall

At a glance

Project by: Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti
Location: Dubrovnik, Croatia

Preview image

Car Park and Sports Hall (Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti)

© Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti

Project images

	Car park resembles a huge platform in the immediate vicinity to the enwalled city of Dubrovnik, zero category UNESCO protected site. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	In the view from the city walls, masses of car park and sports hall are hidden behind the weak urban structure and green masses of the neighboring park. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Pedestrian entrance is organized through the entrance pavilion with cafe bar and terrace overlooking the city. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Wall along the adjacent street is clad in stone in a traditional way that resembles the structure of the medieval city walls. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Entrance pavilion is cantilevered to enable location of parking spaces for disabled on the roof. Sports hall is in the background. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	On top of the car access ramp and ventilation shafts an artificial hill is created. Dry stone landscaping reminds of the great construction pit that was dug in stone to house the car park underground levels. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Sports hall is situated between the car park and the narrow road in its back. Its lower parts are clad with prefabricated concrete panels, its upper parts in profiled glass in steel frames, with thermal insulation visible behind. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	By night, interior of the sports hall is strongly present in the urban space. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Back street and sport courts on the car park roof are connected with a narrow passage. Lower parts of the sports hall walls are enwalled in natural stone here. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Sport courts are lit up by night. Colours of the interior spaces radiate in the surrounding urban space. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Disabled users can access all parts of the complex. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Interior of the café bar is painted red, to contrast with the austere concrete finishing outside. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	In summer months, car park roof works as an active platform all the night long. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Traffic flow in four underground car park levels is organized with smoothly inclined ramps placed in the middle of the floor plan. This way, the entire surface is used for parking. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Interior surfaces of the sports hall are treated with bright colors; light penetrates deep inside, to minimize the effect of being buried in the ground. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Small hall for ballet and athletic is placed in the lower floor, with ramp for access of disabled users. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Small hall is partly buried. Openings to the sport courts are in the level of the outside terrain. Natural light penetrates to the underground corridor through a profiled glass membrane. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	On the south facing gallery in the back of the great hall, profiled glass is used as sun protection too. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Great hall is facing north. Therefore it was possible to turn the entire north wall into big window. Natural light comes from the other side over the gallery too. Roof construction is made of concrete beams. Inexpensive OSB plates are hung between the concrete beams to minimize sound reverberation. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	View to the mountain in the back of the city opens from the big hall. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Four levels of car park are underground, with sport premises on the roof and sports hall next to it. Pedestrian entrance and car access are organized from the adjacent street that declines along the car park walls. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image
	Car park and sports hall are placed in a strong relief formation within the dense city fabric. © Ivanisin. Kabashi. Arhitekti View project image

Architect's statement

The underground car park for 750 cars on four levels is topped by sports enclosures, a café-bar and a terrace overlooking the old city of Dubrovnik and the sea beyond. It was completed upon the first public-private partnership contract in the Republic of Croatia. The primary school gave over the decayed sports courts to the municipality that loaned the land to the investment group. As compensation to the school, the investment group had to build sports courts on the car park's roof and a sports hall on a neighbouring land lot. Located in the immediate vicinity of the historical city core, the car park has relieved the area of the vehicular traffic that is particularly heavy during the summer months.

Squeezed into an irregular site between the main (and only) road in this part of the city, three schools, family houses and a protected public park, the project had to be finished within an extremely tight budget. It also had to meet an array of planning regulations, the strict fire protection criteria for underground buildings with no precedence of similar size in the whole of Croatia plus the earthquake resistance requirements for concrete structures in an extremely high earthquake zone. To make the brief even more complicated, in the buffer zone around the zero category UNESCO heritage site of the Old City of Dubrovnik the heritage protection criteria had to be applied too. Thanks to the system of interior and exterior gently inclined pedestrian ramps and elevators, unobstructed movement of people in wheel chairs is possible through the whole of the car park, the sport premises on its roof, the entrance pavilion with cafe bar and through the sports hall.

The four underground floors are situated under the level of the surrounding park and streets. The entire surfaces of the parking floors are used for parking thanks to the organization scheme with very long ramps with smooth inclinations. To build the underground parking, the 30 000 cubic meters construction pit was dug in the limestone rock, reinforced with sprayed concrete walls and steel anchors up to eight meters long.

Convertible sports hall for the primary school is also partly buried in the rock bed. Thus the difference in levels of the surrounding road and the school yard was solved and system of platforms and staircases around it created. Half buried basement floor houses a small hall for ballet and martial arts, locker rooms and sanitary spaces. Upper floor houses double basketball hall with convertible spectator seats and a gallery. Both main halls face the north and thus it was possible to open them to the dramatic view of the mountain behind the city.

In this project, we were interested most of all in the shape of the relief; in the cultivated landscape on the fringe of the old city yet very close to the natural elements. Views over the old city to the open sea on one and to the bare rock mountain on the other side were strongly present throughout the design and construction processes. We also wanted to keep the memory of the gigantic construction pit- therefore the dry stone landscaping above the main car entrance and the massive stone enwalling to the surrounding streets. Particular constraints imposed by the Heritage department of the City enabled us to stage a revival of the forgotten craft of stone masonry on the external surface of the reinforced concrete structure. During a workshop with students at the Dubrovnik Festival of Architecture in the summer of 2007, which involved a tour of Dubrovnik’s rural surroundings, we had come across a stone mason who was practising his craft in the traditional way: to a depth of at least twenty centimetres, in layers no deeper than thirty centimetres, thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top of the wall. In short, his work resembled the medieval limestone ramparts of Dubrovnik. After long negotiations we finally managed to persuade the clients (a PPP) to accept this extremely slow construction method despite their initial reluctance to bankroll what they call ‘aesthetics’ of the building. By not only cladding but also enwalling the concrete structure, we hoped to turn an infrastructural object into a public space.