1. PREFACE
This position paper aims to present the advancement of the research, focusing in partiular on the work done in the last months concerning the study of the Catalan context. However, it seems necessary to recall the essential contents of the tesis: theme, historical time-span and case-studies, interpreting keys.
Theme
The thesis studies the evolution of facilities for sport and leisure since the post-war years till today. Although this topic is already studied by historians, sociologists and geographers, the experimentation and construction of buildings for leisure has yet to be fully investigated by architectural research. In the first phase of the research has been studied the contribution of several disciplines that had introduced new paradigms and themes about the typological and settlement characteristics of the sport spaces.
The study does not focus on facilities specialized for the competitions, as many publications on stadia and sport palaces are already edited, but it deals with multifunctional facilities facing with the urban scale, related with the context in which are located and with a high level of attractiveness. My research will focus on facilities related to this.
Since scholars agree about the shift, during the Fifties and Sixties, from a notion of sport as a structured practice (organized and/or agonistic) to the spread of a free behavior and experience, the so called "sport-for-all".
Historical time-span and case-studies
The research aims therefore to investigate the development of what is known as the sport and leisure centre since the Fifties till today, in its progressive articulation and distinction, through a selection of case-studies which could link the 'politics' of the provision of sports practice and the 'systematic' construction of facilities in temporal span of twenty years articulated as follows:
- 1900-1920: patronage and mutual association of self-support play an essential role in the organizzation of leisure
- 1920-1940: authoritarian, patronising and relief structures organize leisure in a political and hierarchical system
- 1950-1970: spread of the welfare-state policy related to the democratization of leisure
- 1970-1990: the increase of associative experience based mostly on voluntary action take place of the state organization
- 1990-2016: the beginning of the debate about the organization of a 'Second Welfare' promoted mainly by private system
This periodization helps to make evidence of the relationship among customer, uses and settlement's characters of spaces for sports practice. Based on this it a first hypothesis was drawing up about the selected context for the comparison:
- for the period 1900-1940 Milano is intended to be representative of the construction of the city's sports system before the development of leisure facilities since the Post-war period. Milano as a backstory
- For the period 1950-1970 it considered the English case and the experimentation on multi-purpose buildings and civic centres[1]. The leisure centre
- for the period 1970-1990 the Spanish case offers many suggestion, not only for the 'Barcelona model'[2], but also for a range of architectural experiments on the issue of 'sport for all'. The district equipment
- for the period 1990-2016 the experience of the South/Central-American countries and the Brazilian Sesc[3] that provides an interesting instances on the 'Second Welfare' opportunities. The second (welfare) opportunity
The research, once testing the selected context, will focus on the identification of peculiarities and invariants of the leisure centre. This structure of the research aims to the organization of a double comparative analysis: diachronic (a cross-cutting study of the time-spans) and synchronic (an horizontal study of the time-spans).
Interpreting keys
The general literature on the issue[4] gives hints that could be taken as thesis of the research, here preliminary drafted as interpreting keys:
- relationship among Welfare (first and second), architectural design and urban environment
- relationship among sports facility and other public buildings and spaces (as schools and parks), that is the urban settlement
- functional integration, as a character of the leisure center
- the building by insertion in a consolidated environment (also with the re-use of abandoned facilities) or with the construction of new structures in an outlying context (or non-consolidated environment)
- figurative expression, as the face of the link form-structure
The research aims to:
- clarify the relationship between "main issues" (as invariants) and architectural design
- assess the functional requirements and set out the architectural characters (interdependent variables) that are the constitutive elements of typology
- codifying invariants and peculiarities of case-studies
2. RESEARCH TOOLS AND METHODS
The research was conducted through:
- bibliographic and iconographic research:
- public archives (to consult the official documents for the study of urban strategies and technical drawings of constructed works, etc.)
- archives of architecture studies (for deepening the study of case-studies, the design research, etc.)
- libraries (for deepening some key-aspects: concerning to the more general theme of sports practice, of studied contexts, and of specific case-studies, etc.)
- surveys of studied context (photographic relief, sketches, etc. as tools of direct knowledge of places)
- interviews:
- technical public officers and departments responsible for sport promotion (useful to clarify the strategies implemented in sport promotion policies)
- designer (useful to understand the architects-costumer relationship, the design choices, etc.)
The collected materials are organized as follows:
- reasoned bibliography: organized according to the themes first identified
- register of works: for a diachronic and synchronous comparison of architectures/projects by city, typology, designer