As with the Velodrome and Olympic Pool in Berlin, the Madrid Olympic Tennis Center aims to strengthen the Spanish capital’s candidacy for the Olympic Games. With a plot area of 16,5 hectares, the 100,000-square meter project includes three indoor courts for 12,000, 5,000 and 3,000 spectators, sixteen outdoor courts, five courts with a covered area for 350 spectators each, six training courts, an indoor swimming pool, headquarters for the Spanish Tennis Federation, a tennis school, clubhouse, press center, stadium boxes and other private areas and restaurants.

The urban project recovers a residual area located between large peripheral infrastructures (the M-30 and M-40 beltways and the railway) and metropolitan ones (a sewage treatment plant and a power station) creating a public space that is open during the day and at night. To achieve this, the project includes and enhances the existing fluvial landscape, recovering the river banks with local vegetation.

The built areas are organized around an artificial lake, over which volumes of varying sizes are scattered like islands or fragments of nature beckoning strollers. A system of footbridges opens numerous paths through these volumes, offering spectacular new perspectives. Through this landscaping mechanism the project establishes the superposition of two specific worlds: at level with the lake a reserved seating area (for players, VIP?visitors, journalists); on the water, the general public in a space that favors interaction, circulation and connection with the city.

The three tennis arenas, placed inside this ‘magic box’, are adapted to the different uses of the complex. Their roofs are equipped with a double system of mobile panels mounted on hydraulic jacks for rotation and displacement, thus transforming the closed interior space into an open outdoor one. These movements on the scale of the immense structure throw a giant living shadow onto the landscape. The main building gives the impression of turning round to look back at its surroundings. At the same time, the open roofs, of metal finish, act as a mirror that invites the exterior inside, and vice versa.

The complex is protected by a mutating and unitary skin that changes with light; a protecting metal mesh gown that hangs from the upper slab of this large volume, and that at night acts as a translucent veil, filtering the views of the interior.