Set among a dense cluster of sports facilities, the 27,000-square-foot Centre Sportif et Culturel Marie-José Pérec and Salle de Danse Joséphine Baker uses recreation to strengthen connections in a town of about 4,500 residents. A pedestrian route cuts through the roughly 60,000-square-foot site, linking established amenities and structuring movement across the broader athletic campus.
As Onze04 founder and principal architect Gustavo Silva-Nicoletti explains, the practice sought to “assume the role of an urbanist,” turning the commission into an opportunity to create a new gathering place. The architecture reinforces that ambition through a program split between two buildings, each calibrated to operational demands and Brittany’s mild maritime climate.
Situated between two existing facilities, the new Centre Sportif et Culturel Marie-José Pérec and Salle de Danse Joséphine Baker serves as an urban connector and civic lantern and is organized around two climatic strategies: compact heated volumes for the dance and squash facilities and a sports hall beneath a textile canopy. © JUAN CARDONA Courtesy ONZE04 ARQUITECTES
A compact concrete volume houses the biomass-heated zones, including a dance studio, squash court, changing rooms, and communal areas, while the adjacent sports hall sits beneath a lightweight timber framework enclosed by a PVC-coated composite fiber membrane manufactured by Serge Ferrari.
Rising nearly 92 feet at its highest points, the roof promotes natural airflow, helping maintain comfort throughout the interior. Rather than conditioning the vast volume year-round, the architects designed around winter temperatures averaging around 48°F, enabling largely unheated operation. Combined with abundant daylight and weather protection, the strategy minimizes the need for mechanical intervention.
“You need shelter. You have to protect people from the rain and wind. And you need enough light to use the space,” says Silva-Nicoletti. “But it doesn’t need to be eighteen or twenty degrees [64°F or 68°F] everywhere.”
© JUAN CARDONA Courtesy ONZE04 ARQUITECTES
Named through a public consultation, the complex honors three-time Olympic champion Marie-José Pérec and U.S.-born performer, Resistance member, and civil rights advocate Joséphine Baker, two Black women whose achievements continue to resonate far beyond France.
For Silva-Nicoletti, the project’s significance ultimately lies beyond sustainability metrics. “Architecture has to do with program, with feeling, with space, with proportion, with poetry,” he says. As dusk falls and the illuminated membrane begins to glow above the town, those qualities become palpable.