Urban Sport Center

The design idea of Santa Lucia Football Club is born from the analysis of the characteristics of the area.
Residential, pleasantly peripheral, it is located at the southern edge of the great urban area of Malta, at the same time in a strategic logistic position with its proximity to the international airport.
These characteristics, combined with the size of the area, form an ideal mix for the establishment of the Soccer Academy.
A sort of European sports campus which experts, athletes and sportsmen can use for meetings, team retreats, advanced athletic preparations, thematic congresses, team buildings.
The project revolves around the Soccer Academy, with its collateral facilities such as an indoor pool, a gym, conference rooms and spa, but also includes facilities for the local Santa Lucia Football Club, a commercial mall with supermarket and food court and public spaces accessible for local residents.
The large car park located on the two underground levels has been designed to meet the needs generated by the activities of the project, including those derived from exceptional events such as sports meetings with international fame players or various music and cultural events.
The architecture of the complex is organized into different building blocks, which house the different functions, connected by a single flat roof that becomes the football playground.
The resulting spaces between the different blocks generate a mesh of paths that cross the complex ensuring access from all sides of the structure, a condition that makes the intervention of low urban impact in consideration also to its limited height if compared to the existing surrounding buildings.
Our design idea imagines a lively complex, frequented at all hours of the day by different people, athletes training or taking courses, people shopping, relaxings and enjoying the green areas.
The intent, we hope to have come all together, sport club, investors and designers, is to propose an idea of a completely new place, able to improve the sport level image of Malta at European level, in a structure also able to become an important economic driving force for the area.