In the environment degraded by the action of the old wastewater treatment plant in the Guipuzcoan municipality of Mallabia, the BEAR architecture studio has designed the new Zubitegi Sports Park. The project is conceived as an open infrastructure that functions as a condenser of leisure and sport in the area, perfectly integrated into the natural environment.

The project seeks to mean more than a series of constructions that serve the community. Through the construction of the park, the aim is to recover a deteriorated natural environment, using sport and its infrastructure as an excuse to gain natural land in an environmentally responsible way, making its original ecosystem regenerate.

The project developed by BEAR displays a formal radicality that seeks to facilitate the free and intensive use of its facilities, eliminating the envelopes and defending their public use. The action seeks to create a safe, friendly and user-friendly space that invites users to use the facilities, without black spots, with infrastructures to carry out adapted and enriching activities and sports.

In a serial manner, a dry industrialized construction and superficial foundations are proposed, seeking to minimize the impact on the ground, facilitating assembly and reducing costs. The project is committed to a serial and modular construction that minimizes demolition and is capable of recycling what is demolished in the form of gravel or aggregates for pavements.

Zubitegi Sports Park by BEAR. Photograph by Luis Díaz Díaz.

Project description by BEAR

Open program, time, open project,
rotundity, clarity, geometry, structure, more structure, infrastructure.
We are interested in Cedric Price
We are interested in Herreros
We are interested in Alejandro de la Sota, but what interests us above all is facilitating rather than remaining.
Enabling rather than being.
Technique is the answer.
But what was the question?
It is not a leisure center
It is not a sports center
Could it be a park?
It can be an anti-building.
I wish
At least a building without an interior
An empty building.

The present project aims to recover the southern end of the Mallabia town centre, which has been degraded by an old open sewage treatment plant, and transform it into a kind of open infrastructure, a leisure and sports condenser that dispenses with envelopes to become a street and defend its free and intense use.

Parque deportivo de Zubitegi por BEAR. Fotografía por Luis Díaz Díaz.
Zubitegi Sports Park by BEAR. Photograph by Luis Díaz Díaz.

General objectives

  • Holistic vision. Infrastructural rotundity. The action is linked to pragmatic radicality, celebrating efficiency, resource optimisation and simplicity. The new Zubitegi Kirol Parkea deploys a formal radicality that seeks to facilitate the free and intensive use of its facilities.

  • Integrative and connected intervention. The intervention starts by generating an accessible network of paths and connections that provide a new network of friendly paths for people with reduced mobility and generate a new connection network with the lower part of Mallabia and Ermua. This network of cycle paths becomes in turn an integrated experience on the natural layer of the stream.

  • Inclusive and multigenerational park: Safe, friendly and friendly. Well lit and without black spots, with infrastructures to carry out adapted and enriching sports and activities. Focused on generating an immersive and unique experience from the creativity of its proposals and variety of activities and uses.

Parque deportivo de Zubitegi por BEAR. Fotografía por Luis Díaz Díaz.Zubitegi Sports Park by BEAR. Photograph by Luis Díaz Díaz.

  • Regenerative and sustainable project: the project is not limited to building a series of sports infrastructures, but through its construction it recovers the margin of the Zubitegi stream, strengthens its flora and fauna and regenerates the ecosystem greatly damaged by the old water treatment plant. Sport and its infrastructures as an excuse to gain natural land and to educate environmentally while we enjoy our leisure and physical activity.

  • Regional reference infrastructure The opportunity to provide Mallabia with a sports node must be understood beyond the strict limits of the project and think of an adaptive and gradual strategy from which to address a unique sports use that structures the southern part of the municipality and adds value and appeal to the region. To achieve this, a relational entity is created that seeks a new notion of beauty, drawing, step by step, a latent garden of the existing and the new, the natural and the built, the historical and the symbolic. A living infrastructure for the territory, for its residents and its visitors.

Parque deportivo de Zubitegi por BEAR. Fotografía por Luis Díaz Díaz.Zubitegi Sports Park by BEAR. Photograph by Luis Díaz Díaz.

  • Minimize earthworks and reuse what has been demolished. A construction is proposed that minimizes demolitions and is capable of recycling what has been demolished in the form of gravel or aggregates for pavements.

  • Superficial foundations: deep or buried foundations are not proposed, to minimize operations, all of which are carried out superficially. Facilitating assembly and reducing costs and impact on the land.

  • Serial and modular construction. All of this focused on an industrialized dry construction that increases performance and reduces time and impact.

More information

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Architects
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BEAR. Lead architects.- Ane Arce, Iñigo Berasategui.

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Project team
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Jaime Gutierrez, Itziar Molinero, Arthur Debelle,  Julene Larrea.

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Collaborators
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Landscape.- SOIL.
Structure  consultant.- Mecanismo.

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Client
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Mallabiako Udala- Mallabia City Council.

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Dates
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2022.

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Location
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Mallabia, Bizkaia. Spain.

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Photography
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BEAR is an architecture office based in Bilbao that explores the possibilities of architecture as a discursive practice. Directed by Ane Arce and Iñigo Berasategui, BEAR resumes its activity in 2021 after operating since 2018 as AZAB. His works have received important recognitions and publications in specialized national and international media. It is worth noting the Peña Ganchegui 2019 award for the best Young Basque Architects, the Egurtek 2020 Award or various recognitions in Arquia Próxima and BEAU.
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