Sportspark Escamp

Sportpark Escamp is a prototypical modernistic island-like sports park, situated right in the middle of a post war extension neighborhood: introvert, isolated, mono-functional, with a low density and intensity of use. Most of the park is occupied by football fields out of natural grass. They are used mainly on weekends and in the evening. The rest of the time the park is empty and inaccessible.

This project turns Escamp into a multifunctional urban sports park that combines a variety of outdoor sports with recreational facilities and routes that are strongly linked to the surrounding urban fabric.
By introducing football fields out of artificial grass – which allow for a more intense use – space is liberated for new functions without sacrificing the football-capacity of the park. The intensity of use is further strengthened by the addition of extra sports facilities (tennis, skateboarding), a play garden, and a school with daycare that uses the sports fields for gym and their annual sports day. These programmatic interventions strengthen the neighborhood function of the park and animate it also during weekdays and at daytime.

A new system of elevated routes, which continue the pedestrian network of the surrounding neighborhood, opens the location for recreational use. This public armature is designed as a body of earth that incorporates functions like parking, dressing rooms, storages and tribunes.

It creates two park levels: a lineair and informal park on the same level as the surrounding neighborhood and a sunken and formal park with several well defined outdoor sports fields. This landscape concept guarantees attractive visual relations between athletes, spectators and people strolling through the elevated park.