CNSD Sports halls – Fontainebleau, France

Barthélémy Griño a remporté en 2017 un concours organisé par Christian Dior Couture portant sur le design de façade de son magasin situé au sein du Dubaï Mall. Ce concept exclusif a ensuite été décliné dans de nombreuses boutiques à travers le monde, notamment en Asie et aux Etats-Unis. CFor almost 50 years, the CNSD has been home to all of France’s military sports training courses on the edge of the Fontainebleau forest. Uncoordinated development, the dispersal of otherwise obsolete infrastructure and the desire to open up the military complex to civilian sportsmen and women led the Ministry of Defence to embark on an ambitious project. The redevelopment was carried out with the aim of bringing out the intrinsic qualities of the site, to provide an exceptional setting for top-level sport.
The spatial reorganisation is being carried out in 3 stages.
Cleaning up, lightening and clarifying the campus in order to reduce the built footprint and creating landscaped land reserves in order to regain the atmosphere of a clearing, the heart of a forest, by returning as much land as possible to nature.
Structuring the site with a new urban framework from the entrance to the sports complex serving all the facilities. Two new areas of high symbolic value – the Place d’Armes and the Esplanade des Sports – connected by a pedestrian mall, link the site and organise the routes through it.
Enhance the quality of the new sequence with light buildings that echo the woodland character of the campus. The architecture is resolutely contemporary, soft and calm, using variations based on a key material: wood.
Two new sports halls shape the landscape of the sports esplanade, which slightly overlooks the football pitches. The swimming pool hall, with its 50 m pool, dojo and restaurant, is aligned with the housing, while the athletics hall closes off the esplanade. The two halls have a similar design. A vast gabled roof studded with skylights overhangs the gables to form a canopy and turns over the long sides to clad the facades of the first floor, while the ground floors are uniformly encircled by a glazed facade opening up the various sports activities to the forest, while lifting the halls off the ground.