Architecture Competition for a Swimming Stadium: Olympic Swimming Pool for Taranto 2026 – XX Mediterranean Games

Architecture Competition for a Swimming Stadium: Olympic Swimming Pool for Taranto 2026 – XX Mediterranean Games

The general objective of this International Design Contest is to start the construction of the Swimming Stadium for the XX Mediterranean Games 2026 in Taranto, in other words to allow competitive swimming activities on an international level connected with the creation of an architecture that enhances the landscape context and the historical pre‐existences.

During the event, 32 sports will involve 25 facilities for the competitions and 15 for the training. A big part of the event will take place in the existing structures, in the perspective of a regional sports assets recovery. Only a few structures will be built from scratch and, through an integrated design with the local heritage, they can become iconic architectures for the city, representative of a process of transformation and renewal: a Swimming Stadium, a Federal Nautical Center and a multidisciplinary Sports Center.
Sporting infrastructures play a strategic role in the urban and functional organization of the cities.These are architectures that also have a function as social aggregators with identity values and enhancement of the sense civic duty. A city with many sports facilities has repercussions on the promotion of health and sociability. These belong to the category of essential urban “services”.
The Area for the Swimming Stadium straddles an important jump in altitude, and this configuration of the soil, will allow the construction of a bridge‐building between the level of the road and the sea level. The project makes accessible, tangibly and through the creation of a series of optical cones, a coastal area not currently in use. Except for important urban tracts, such as the seafront “Vittorio Emanuele III”, the multiple and different sea fronts of the city of Taranto are often underused, or occluded by other latent resources, such as the buildings and properties of the Navy. The sea is recognized as a great opportunity for the redevelopment of the city: the sea as an extraordinary and diversified “endowment of public blue”.
The Swimming Stadium is seen as one of those projects capable to recover an important stretch of coast, now abandoned, and return it to civic uses. The overall size of the area necessary for the construction of the new Stadio del Nuoto is about 5,000 square meters for the indoor pool, about 4000 square meters for the outdoor pool; for a total of approximately 9,000 square meters, which can be spread over several levels by exploiting the changes in altitude and the irregularity of the ground.The swimming sports facility must therefore be equipped with two swimming pools, one indoor and one outdoor, which must comply with the minimum standards for the “Olympic Games” and the conduct of the Swimming and Water Polo disciplines, giving a more complete offer both for free time but above all for sport at a competitive level.The designers will have to evaluate and adopt solutions that contemplate building envelopes capable of creating positive effects on environmental parameters (reduction of the heat island, better management of rainwater, absorption of air pollutants) and that reduce the consumption that weighs on the management of the sports facility (winter heating of the pool room, air changes, water management in the pool).The containment of energy consumption will be essential for an economically and ecologically sustainable management. The main goal will be the realization of a greater environmental comfort of users, having the maximization of energy containment and lower operating costs in relation to consumption and maintenance.