Architecture as a driver for the athletic performance enhancement of professional swimmers at the University of Pretoria, TuksSport

Abstract

Sports architecture, through the standardisation and the intense control held by sports authorities over the past century, has experienced a change in identity: from a tool for social movements to a shell for commercial institutions (Payandi, 2013: 5-6). The commercialisation of sport has resulted in sport as an industry - and as a result, its architecture - having the main objective of economic gain, as opposed to the initial goal of sport to “better the individual” (Tao, 2017: 314). Architects should, therefore, revert back to this original objective, if they aim to design sports architecture that facilitates the enhancement of athletic performance for professional athletes as the main user-group of this project. Contemporary sports architecture has evolved into a unified “international-style” of sports venue design (Payandi, 2013: 6-7), dislocated from its context and favouring functionality as the main design driver. The experience of the user or athlete is often ignored during the design process resulting in the architect only responding to some aspects of the professional athlete as their main user group. If the architecture carries any potential of “bettering the individual” (Tao, 2017: 314), through athletic performance enhancement specifically, the designer must spatially respond to the athlete as a whole - physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually (Reynaldi et. al, 2019: 70). By responding to an athlete’s psyche (experiential) and their physical condition (functional), the architecture will be able to maximise its performance enhancement potential. In this mini-dissertation, the TuksAquatics Centre is used as a prototype site to investigate the impact that architecture can have on sport and its athletes.