HORSE RIDING ARENA

Frozen waves

Awards and Honours BUILD Architecture Award “Best Renovation Project of the Year”, 2018. “Loop Design Award – Honorable Mention” in Sports and Recreation Category, 2020. Finalist of Castilla – La Mancha Architecture and Urbanism Awards, 2022.
Status: Built.
Project Year: 2014-2018.
Location: Madrid, Spain.
Area: 2.350 m2
Design: OOIIO Architecture
Team: Joaquín Millán Villamuelas, Manuel Fernández Corral.
Structures:Metalurgica del Deza s.a.
Facilities: OOIIO Architecture.
Building Engineer: Manuel Jaime Coira Iglesias.
Health and Safety:Joaquín Millán Villamuelas.
Client: Private.
Builder: Vipecon Galicia s.l.

OOIIO Arquitectura carries out a profound reform of sports facilities for training and care of jumping competition horses, in a cattle farm located in a privileged enclave of the fields of Castilla.

The commission consisted of integrating a horse riding hall into a large country house of traditional architecture and reforming old stables to update them, so that the complex formed first-class facilities, at the service of beautiful competition horses, which They are undoubtedly the real protagonists of this place, where details are not spared so that they feel as comfortably as possible.

A horse riding school is ultimately a large quadrangular space, delimited by four fences, with soft ground where riders and horses are trained, in this case for jumping competitions, an equestrian discipline consisting of crossing a route of several obstacles on horseback built with bars, without committing any fault or demolition. The tests are held following several scales: against the clock, hunting, power, with a stopwatch, etc. and they are classified in different groups according to the heights, that oscillate between 1´10 m. and 1´60 m.

The original building was shaped like a rectangle, with a central courtyard that serves as an outdoor horse riding school and, in order to train in rainy days, it is decided to build the new covered riding school, demolishing one of the arms of the rectangle and integrating the new construction with the rest of the great country house.

The new building aims to protect against the weather, but it should also have a good lighting as neutral as possible. A lot of light but well distributed, shadows were not wanted that could distract or confuse the horses when jumping, so it is decided to open some skylights on the north deck, which fill the interior with natural light, without entering a single ray of sun.

The horse riding hall was then resolved by means of large porches that save a distance of 30 meters each, with broken triangular beams that make up a unique gable roof, integrated with the rest of the building, which opens to the north light with a succession of peak skylights that let light through the soul of the beams of each portico, as if it were the shark’s gills.

The new roof formed by that repetition of skylights, and seen from a distance in beautiful landscape of the farm, is shown as a repetition of frozen waves in the middle of a vast expanse of field around it.

The traditional preexisting building seems to embrace the new element as wanting to integrate it into the whole. The color of the walls of the large pieces of prefabricated concrete that close the riding hall, the doors and carpentry, the roof, in short the whole exterior aspect of the new element, wants to imitate and integrate into what was already there.

The blocks that surround the new piece, were reformed and adapted to be at the height of a first level sports facilities. Especially for riders, caretakers and, mainly, horses to enjoy, can train and rest comfortably.