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Academia Atlas serves six professional football fields and includes clubhouses, applied sports science facilities and administrative offices. A key role of the project is to offer accommodation and resources to young players from less privileged backgrounds. Using locally-sourced materials and traditional construction techniques, the studio transformed the seven-hectare site into a collegiate-style campus full of young and healthy people connecting through the most popular sport of the country. The landscape design features only endemic species, ensuring low maintenance and water consumption throughout the year. Some plants are encouraged to climb the structure, adding a timeless quality and creating a strong sense of place despite the site's lack of immediate cultural or scale references.
Academia Atlas was designed around a modular system. Open-air voids where elemental column and beam structures meet to frame the building that establish a grid-like effect. The reticulated roof works as a brise-soleil in the more densely constructed areas of the building. This consistent modular system allows the flexibility to transform or grow the interior spaces according to the club’s future needs while optimizing the use of materials on the project. An additional design challenge was managing the flow of people in more private areas, such as the clubhouse and the main team's training grounds. The integration of vegetation, along with the creation of a central courtyard, significantly contributes to this clear space delineation. The project is an interesting case study of how a rigid 8.4 m by 8.4 m modular system can be applied to result in a building that is flexible, dynamic, and engaging through the richness of its spatial qualities. It is also exemplary of how to redefine conventional sports architecture building typologies.
Alejandro Irarragorri Gutiérrez, Orlegi Sports Chairman says, “Academia Atlas is about creating the right environment and facilities for the future development of young players making entry into elite football more widely accessible in Mexico. The project has also been conceived by us together with Sordo Madaleno to create jobs in Jalisco through local procurement processes while giving the region an important landmark promoting the role of sport in society."
Sordo Madaleno is an interdisciplinary architecture, urban, and interior design firm with a
global vision and 85 years of experience that is committed to clients around the world. The
practice is dedicated to excellence in architectural design with a sustainable approach to
social development. Leadership flows through three generations of professionals who have
developed and calibrated the vision of an evolving urban laboratory to create new experiences locally, regionally, and globally. The practice is based in Mexico City with a newly established studio in London led by Fernando Sordo Madaleno.
