The “Piscina Felice Scandone” is a sports facility consisting of a three-storey building that houses an Olympic-size swimming pool for sports competitions, spaces for support services and for the public, parking for users and employees and green areas, for a total area of about 14,000 square meters.

The facility has an architectural structure unique in its kind for size, capacity and morphology of the “architecture of water” intended for competitive events in the Olympic pool. The typology is similar to the swimming stadium and the same structure still shows a design school of excellence (evidenced by the shapes of the steps with elliptical development with excellent curve of visibility, large beach areas, brightness and volumes).

The interventions carried out on the occasion of the Universiade are mainly maintenance and requalification, and have been designed to make the system homologable and performance at international events. The modern parameters required by the FISU Organising Committee have been solved in architectural respect of the existing structure, with non-invasive methods, in safety and with certain execution times, equipping the facility with approved high-performance sports equipment for FINA international events.

The new warm-up facility
As requested by FISU, an essential element for the development of competitions in the existing system, was the construction of a warm up pool, adjacent to the existing system and of similar size, which could easily allow athletes to carry out the necessary warming up before facing the races.
The intervention, therefore, involved the construction of a permanent Olympic pool measuring 50 m x 21m x 2m with a tensile cover that can be opened along the sides, to allow its use throughout the year, providing for the use, after the Universiade, for swimming school training. The new system is functionally and technologically connected to the existing structure, on the south side, of which it shares the spaces for support services, for the public and subsidiary areas, as well as some systems.

In order to allow an easy and direct connection with the Scandone swimming pool, a tunnel with a metal frame and a PVC technical membrane cover was built between the south entrance and the new pool. The project can be classified according to CONI standards as a level III competition facility.

In the positioning of the new facility, the objective of maximum integration with the existing structure was pursued, so as to be able to consider the whole as a real sports complex. The new swimming pool, in fact, is built in the green area along the south side of the existing facility, and arranged altimetrically so as to contain the volumes of excavation.

The tank, made with prefabricated type with hot-rolled stainless steel panels with PVC coating, has a continuous spillway of Finnish type around the perimeter.
In order to ensure continuous use of the facility throughout the year, a tensile roof was installed with a structure of arches in laminated wood and double-walled membrane with high thermal performance.