“Sport is a theme that goes back a long way for us,” says architect François Chas, one of four partners who head Paris-based NP2F. “In 2014, for example, we organized an exhibition on the relationship between sport and the city in Paris and its suburbs, an alternative prism through which to read the urban condition.” Two years later, when the city of Bordeaux approached the firm to design a sports complex in its new Brazza district, the lessons learned researching the show proved invaluable. “We surveyed all 17,000 of the Paris region’s sports facilities,” continues Chas, “and it transpired that an awful lot of them are closed-off spaces that turn their back on the city and stink of stale sweat and musty socks.” In Bordeaux, in contrast, light, air, and openness are pushed just about as far as they can go.

Located at the northeastern edge of Brazza on a former industrial site on the banks of the River Garonne, the 66-foot-high UPCA Sport Station piles up five levels of disparate activities ranging from aerobics, bodybuilding, and rock climbing, to squash, the racket sport padel, and a golf driving range—the latter installed on the roof, its chain-link netting signaling the building for miles around. Intended as a leisure destination where you might spend the day, the complex also includes a ground-level restaurant and a rooftop bar, while 13,500 square feet of retail space, programmed in the Brazza-district master plan, occupies one end of the first floor. Constructed entirely in concrete (the only technology that could supply the required strength and spans within budget), the building’s skeleton takes the form of cast-in-place columns and beams carrying prefabricated floors—a sparing use of the material in keeping with NP2F’s Lacaton & Vassal–inspired goal of doing more with less. In the same spirit, and given that most sports can be played outdoors, the Station’s frame is left largely open to the air (just like the next-door parking garage), with only one third of the roughly 170,000-square-foot floor area being enclosed and fitted with HVAC. The benefits are immediately obvious: vastly reduced energy consumption, lower taxes for both developer and operator (the “outdoor” parts remain unlevied), and a direct (and rather spectacular) relationship with the cityscape for both users and passersby.