03/ Varazdin, Radman Vrbanek © MMVI Competition Honourable Mention

Sports Hall, Varazdin

This is a sports hall on the bank of the river Drava, in the midst of a natural resort. The city of Varazdin (at one point the capital) boasts its Baroque legacy: its architecture, music and the exquisite horticulture of its cemetery. We attempted a neo-baroque approach of modulation emphasising the adherent logic of continuity. Instead of adopting a conventional approach to building, we manipulated the existing dike of the river and turned it into a version of a grandiose staircase (à la Opera Garnier), with two halls nested and topped with hovering disks (elliptical, not circular).
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The complex is planned to be part of a future university campus which would ensure the publicness of the venue even ‘after hours’. With this symbiosis in mind we opted for a friendly, single-surface, all-accessible landscape design.