The global pandemic has prompted a renewed focus on “healthy living.” Since the idea that “life lies in movement” was introduced over 300 years ago, the importance of physical activity for human health, vitality, and enriching life experiences has remained undeniable.
In 2021, the State Council launched the “National Fitness Plan (2021-2025),” which has accelerated the popularity, specialization, and diversification of sports facilities. Today, sports architecture extends beyond large multi-purpose venues aligned with municipal or provincial governments. It has become an integral part of daily life, offering diverse expressions: unique venues blending sports and entertainment, distinctive experiential spaces immersed in natural beauty, and small sports hubs serving local communities.
As summer begins, Goa Elephant Design showcases a curated collection of sports architecture projects. Though varied in scale and form, these buildings share a common goal: to “embed the joy of sports into everyday life.” By using sports as a connecting thread, they integrate cultural and leisure functions, ultimately promoting a healthier and more vibrant lifestyle for users.
Tiantai Mountain Snow Park: A Mountain-Integrated Ice and Snow Venue
Located within Tiantai Mountain—a nationally recognized 5A scenic area famed for its Buddhist and Taoist heritage as well as breathtaking landscapes—Tiantai Mountain Snow Park sits at an elevation of 800 meters. This venue features primary snow trails, snow loop slides, and other facilities, marking it as Taizhou City’s first comprehensive ice and snow theme park. It uniquely combines sports with cultural tourism.
△ Site Relationship Analysis
The architects aimed to harmonize the venue with the surrounding mountain landscape. Expansive outdoor platforms create connections between the building, the mountains, and adjacent roads. The curved platform wraps around the structure like a flowing ribbon, addressing pedestrian flow while offering multiple vantage points to enjoy the mountain scenery and enriching the spatial experience on the ground floor.
The facade design draws inspiration from the lotus flower, a symbol deeply rooted in Buddhist culture representing purity and harmony with the serene mountain environment of Tiantai. The architects abstracted the lotus form using white perforated aluminum panels combined with solid aluminum sheets to create geometric folds. The perforated sections feature a hexagonal pattern with interlocking shapes reminiscent of snowflakes.
Project Information
Project Name: Tiantai Mountain Snow Park
Design Firm: Goa Elephant Design
Location: Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province
Design & Completion: 2018–2021
Building Area: 19,400 square meters
Image Credit: Goa Elephant Design, Gu Zhenqiang
Yada Sports and Fitness Center: Exercising Amid Scenic Views
Located in Yangxian Xishan Town, Yixing, Jiangsu Province, the Yada Sports and Fitness Center is part of a vast 6,000-acre natural fitness and sports area in the picturesque countryside. The site boasts exceptional natural landscapes, with Yangxian Lake to the front, unique mine cliffs behind, and a blend of hills and flat terrain.
The architecture serves as a ‘container for scenery.’ The swimming pool on the second floor is designed as a floating box embedded within the building’s volume, creating a distinctive entrance feature. The pool combines indoor and outdoor sections, forming a nearly 50-meter-long deep water surface. To maximize transparency, the pool’s indoor water surface is covered with glass, supported by a suspended frame holding six-meter-wide glass panels, ensuring swimmers enjoy unobstructed panoramic views.
Inside the pool, the calm water reflects nearby rocks, distant mountains, and the sky, creating a sensation of swimming between cliffs and horizons. At dusk, the soft light enhances the reflections, deepening the intimate connection between swimmers, landscape, and atmosphere.
Swimming pool at dusk © Zhang Xi | Material provided by WJ STUDIO Wanjing Design
Beyond the pool, the center includes a gym, golf practice room, table tennis hall, and outdoor facilities such as basketball and tennis courts, as well as extreme sports areas. These diverse amenities make it a lively hub, attracting residents and visitors to enjoy sports amid stunning natural surroundings.
Project Information
Project Name: Yada Sports and Fitness Center
Design Firm: Goa Elephant Design
Location: Yixing City, Jiangsu Province
Design & Completion: 2019–2021
Building Area: 4,869 square meters
Image Credit: Goa Elephant Design, WJ STUDIO Wanjing Design, Zhang Xi
Senhe Sea Sports Center: A Social and Sports Hub
Situated in the heart of Senhe Sea Town, Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou, the Senhe Sea Sports Center is a compact community facility. The town’s residents are mostly young adults born in the 1990s. Reflecting on the lifestyle and behaviors of this “new generation,” the architects challenge the conventional “closed” nature of sports venues and propose a “social sports space.”
The design concept centers on the “heart of communication.” The ground floor is elevated, allowing the street to flow beneath the building, while the first floor extends the public space at street level. Sports facilities like the swimming pool and badminton court enclose a triangular courtyard, which serves as a vital pathway, forming the “heart” of the complex.
Color and light are used to energize the atrium, with a vibrant orange scheme resembling growing branches that spread from the atrium into the building’s public spaces—entrance steps, terraces, and the elevated ground floor—creating a striking contrast with the warm gray exterior. This design invites passersby to engage with the space visually and socially.
The building’s staggered form interacts positively with the surrounding plaza, offering outdoor display areas for commercial activities. This approach transforms sports facilities from isolated functional spaces into vibrant community hubs that facilitate interaction and connection through sports.
By reimagining sports and social dynamics among the new generation, the architects have redefined sports venues as multifunctional complexes that foster both physical activity and community engagement.
Project Information
Project Name: Senhe Sea Sports Center
Design Firm: Goa Elephant Design
Location: Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province
Design & Completion: 2020–2022
Building Area: 4,899 square meters
Image Credit: Goa Elephant Design
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