ANMA Wraps a Brick Monolith Around 1,000 Seats and Recycled Oyster Shells in Colombes

Colombes sits in that particular band of Parisian periphery where the A86 motorway can sever a neighborhood in half. The Marie-José Pérec Sports Complex by ANMA is positioned precisely at that fault line, on Boulevard Valmy, acting as a programmatic hinge between the city center to the south and the Columbus development to the north. The building's generous forecourt, freely accessible gardens, and activated ground floor are not decorative gestures but deliberate urban sutures. Named for the legendary French sprinter, the complex delivers a 5,100 square meter program that includes a 1,000-seat main hall for national competitions, a secondary multisport hall for schools, a media events room, an e-sports room, a weight room, and spaces for local sports associations.

What makes this project genuinely interesting is the discipline it imposes on itself. ANMA designed the building through a global performance contract that links conception to long-term operation, which means every material decision had to justify itself not just aesthetically but economically over decades. The result is a compact volume clad in light-colored brick, its joints laid hollow and running so that every brick could, in theory, be recovered and reused. The exterior paving is made from recycled oyster shells. Interior walls use raw-earth brick. Acoustic panels are wood fiber. None of this reads as performative sustainability theater; it reads as a building that simply refuses to waste.

A Brick Volume That Remembers Its Neighbor

The facade's light-colored brick is not arbitrary. It reinterprets the brick of the nearby Usine des Eaux, the historic Water Factory, inserting the sports complex into the existing urban fabric without mimicry or disruption. The volume curves gently where it meets neighboring housing and stretches linearly along the row of existing plane trees on Boulevard Valmy, trees that were preserved for both biodiversity and visual continuity with the neighborhood. The building defers to what was already there.

From the street, the complex reads as two distinct registers: a transparent glazed socle at ground level, open and inviting, topped by the brick monolith above. The textured facade with its hollow running bond catches light differently throughout the day, giving weight and presence to the upper volume while the glass base dissolves the threshold between public space and interior program. It is a simple formal strategy, but it works precisely because ANMA did not try to complicate it.

The Glass Ground Floor as Urban Living Room

The glazed ground floor is the project's most socially important move. At dusk, it glows behind the row of mature plane trees, signaling activity and openness. A wide entry staircase flanked by planted beds leads visitors up into the lobby, and the transparency means passers-by on Boulevard Valmy can always see life inside. This is a public building that behaves like one, which is rarer than it should be.

Multiple pedestrian paths thread through the site's gardens and landscaped perimeters, and the forecourt itself functions as a new public space for the neighborhood. The ground has been renaturalized and kept maximally permeable, allowing the building's footprint to prioritize nature over asphalt. Parked bicycles at the entrance, not cars, tell you something about the intended relationship between this building and its users.

Timber Trusses and the Honest Ceiling

Step inside the main sports hall and the roof structure becomes the dominant visual event. A mixed metal and wood beam system uses tensioned beams to span the large hall, and the entire structure is left fully exposed. Zenithal roof sheds pour natural light across the courts, reducing dependence on artificial lighting during daytime use. The sawtooth profile visible in section drawings translates into a rhythmic, almost industrial quality overhead that contrasts warmly with the blue sports flooring below.

The secondary halls share this philosophy of structural honesty. Concrete walls, wood-fiber acoustic panels, and the visible bones of the building create interiors that feel robust rather than precious. During community events, the halls fill with people in colored vests beneath these ceilings, and the architecture recedes to become infrastructure for collective activity. That is exactly what a municipal sports complex should do.

Interior Warmth and Vertical Circulation

The interior atrium, with its timber seating and spiral staircase, introduces a moment of domestic warmth into an otherwise institutional program. Morning sunlight fills this space, and the wood cladding used throughout the interior gives the corridors and common areas a tactile quality that brick and glass alone would not achieve. The 420 square meters of common and social spaces are distributed to encourage lingering, not just transit between courts.

The stacking of program across levels is compact and legible. The first two levels house the media hall, secondary multisport hall, and multipurpose rooms for associations. The upper floors hold the main hall with its 1,000-seat bleachers. Vertical circulation connects these without confusion, and the spiral staircase in the atrium acts as both functional connector and spatial anchor, giving visitors orientation within a building that could easily have become a labyrinth of corridors.

Frugality as Design Intelligence

ANMA frames this project around two paired ideas: identity and frugality. The firm pursued compactness across three dimensions: volume, footprint, and facade development, minimizing the quantity of material deployed while maximizing the character each material delivers. Brick that can be dismantled and reused. Oyster-shell paving that diverts waste from landfill. Raw-earth interior walls that require no paint, no finish, no ongoing chemical maintenance. Every choice reduces the building's long-term operational burden.

The global performance contract model, where design responsibility extends through years of operation, is still uncommon in European public architecture. It forces architects to think like stewards rather than stylists. Here, the result is a building that will age well because it was designed to age well, not because someone chose a fashionable patina. The materials are honest about what they are, and the building is honest about what it costs to keep running.

Plans and Drawings

The site plans reveal how precisely the building volume is calibrated to its urban context: the footprint is compact, with landscape wrapping the perimeter and multiple pedestrian routes woven through the greenery. The axonometric drawing is particularly instructive, showing the vertical stacking of gymnasium, bleachers, and tiered support spaces within a single tight envelope. Longitudinal and transverse sections expose the sawtooth roof structure and the double-height gymnasium volume, making visible the mixed timber and steel truss system that defines the interior experience.

The elevation drawings confirm what the photographs suggest: a restrained two-register composition of colonnade and brick mass, punctuated by a vertical tower element that gives the building a marker on the skyline. The gridded openings in the upper volume are proportioned to admit light without compromising the thermal and structural integrity of the brick envelope. These are not decorative drawings; they are evidence of a building designed through section, not rendered into existence.

Why This Project Matters

Municipal sports complexes rarely receive the design attention they deserve. They serve enormous populations, they operate around the clock, and they define how a neighborhood feels about itself. The Marie-José Pérec Sports Complex treats all of these obligations seriously. It reconnects divided neighborhoods, creates new public space, hosts national-level competition alongside school gym classes, and does it all within a material palette that prioritizes durability, reusability, and low maintenance. It is infrastructure that also happens to be architecture.

ANMA's contribution here is not a signature form or a spectacular gesture. It is the demonstration that rigor, applied consistently from urban strategy through material detailing, produces buildings that serve their communities better and longer than spectacle ever could. The hollow-jointed bricks waiting to be unbuilt and rebuilt elsewhere, the oyster shells underfoot, the raw earth on the walls: these are not talking points. They are a building culture that treats resources as borrowed, not consumed. More public projects should start from that premise.

Marie-José Pérec Sports Complex by ANMA, Colombes, France. 5,100 m². Completed 2024. Photography by 11h45 - Florent Michel.

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