Sirens Football Club

The project idea of the Sirens Football Club, is to create a place of social gathering in which useful functions to the neighboring urban locations, find place. Functions that need to be balanced between them to allow the fruition of the area on a continuous basis for resident people, tourists and people in transit.
The opportunity is given by the restructuring of the Sirens Football Club sport complex, to which a commercial mall is added, a limited office space and a large parking area to meet the needs for cars parking generated by the various activities, but also with the idea to build a first exchanger parking outside the urban centers of St Paul, Qawra and Bugibba.
Much attention has been paid to balancing the inclusion of the various activities with the intention of ensuring the use of the complex as continuous as possible.
For this purpose, the sports area provides all the necessary facilities for the club, who promote the initiative, but also a public gym and outdoor spaces organized on a sort of terrace that can also host events of collective nature.
The commercial area, necessary to guarantee the financial management of the whole complex, is arranged on three levels and faces, to the west side, on an uncovered area around which some restaurants and public spaces can be enjoyed collectively, almost like a sort of small urban park.
The large car park, located on the underground floors, has been designed to meet all the needs generated by the activities of the area but, with its location outside the town and the presence of the existent bus stops, represents also a first element to solve the problem of the area traffic management.
Thinking about the architectural aspect, the main attention has been placed to the correct insertion of the new building in the existing context and in the way it would be possible to transform this border area, between the urban fabric and the regional road network, in a qualified and attractive place.
The main project gesture has been to raise-up a strip of land and insert the new building underneath, reaching a height not going beyond the one of the adjacent buildings. In this way we tried almost to create a volume which is camouflaged in the context in which it is placed, with a regular, horizontal shape, not very evident in relation to the size of the complex.
The intent we hope to have come all together, sports club, investors and designers, is to propose an idea of a place that is not closed in itself but an integral and qualifying part of the urban fabric in which it is inserted.