Rock on Bond - A Purpose-Built Sport Facility

The project elaborates upon the articulation of architectural intentions and methods of expression  and demands that students explore them with even great intensity and depth. Students are to design a purpose-built sport facility within a preordained urban context in Toronto.

The studio determine the selection of the site by the preference of the student, so addressing the site to understand physical qualities along the sociogenic factors that could impact the design of the project. The activity for this project was a purpose-built sport facility, being the activity undertake on this building indoor rock climbing.

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Some of the factors related to the program for this facilities included

Contextual relationships with the urban context

Historical, social and demographic background

Projecte fits in the local context

Technical and regulatory compliance

Functional programming

The conceptualization of this building started by understanding the high traffic of the location. As a result, a square-based building locates, services areas of the building, requiring less complexity than the areas where the rock climbing would be located on the first floor. As the building moves up, the interaction of an upper hexagon and bottom square base of the building creates a series of volumetric conditions that would generate situations responding to the movement of rock climbing.

Glazing opening units are used as a part of the building envelope located to the north, increasing exposure of the interior activity with the exterior context, and at the south to allow for sunlight penetration, a system of perforated metal shades regulates the light getting in.
The structural diagrid was found as a system that would generate interiors requiring fewer structural members, allowing for greater clearance on the interior of the building, creating spaces with less interruption of structural members. The open character of these spaces would allow for a building where the 3-dimensional character of this activity is exposed to be observed easier, and even to host competitions. As most of the rock climbing facilities in Toronto are buildings that have been re-adapted to respond to the requirement of this sport, thinking about a building whose structure would allow for total exposure to the activity would be beneficial to host competitions and increase the way on how the athletes learn from others by observing different techniques.

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