A wooden grid for connected training
Pavillon Smart Training © LAST / EPFL / Olivier Wavre
In the latest special issue of "Ville en Bois" published by espazium - Les éditions pour la culture du bâti, Camille Claessens-Vallet provides an analysis of the Smart Training pavilion at the heart of the Centre sportif universitaire de Dorigny (CSUD), the result of a competition for students organized by the Laboratory of architecture and sustainable technologies (LAST), in collaboration with the Service des bâtiments et travaux of UNIL (Unibat), with the support of the Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA).
This realization aims to increase the offer proposed to the university community and to promote the links between research and sports practices while stimulating the consideration of sustainability issues by the architecture students of EPFL. The new pavilion simultaneously expands the space for individual training and creates a place for connected sports, at the interface between practice and research in sport science.
The project selected through a competition won by Martin Handley, Yann Junod, and Nicola Schürch resulted in an architectural proposal that meets the programmatic needs with optimal adequacy of the means implemented. "The creation of a pavilion dedicated to smart training could have led us to imagine an ultra-connected architecture: however, it is precisely by being low-tech, humble, and precise that the project stands out," emphasizes Camille Claessens-Vallet.
The building has also recently been nominated for the Arc Award 2022. With this award, the Swiss Building Documentation aims to reward the best buildings in Switzerland every year.