Estudio Úbeda Valero and Roque Carlos Valero Complete an H-Plan Sports Building inside a Squash Court

Not many briefs begin with the instruction to build inside a squash court. In Alacant, on the edge of the agricultural plain known as the huerta, Estudio Úbeda Valero and Roque Carlos Valero were asked to extend a fragmented multipurpose sports complex. The key move was occupying the second of two existing squash courts and, in doing so, completing an H-shaped plan that had always been latent in the original concrete walls. Rather than clearing the site and starting over, the architects treated the found geometry as a constraint worth honoring.

What makes the 1,000 square meter result worth studying is how consistently it pursues a single argument: that new construction should be indistinguishable in material from the old, yet legible in spatial ambition. The board-formed concrete of the existing walls reappears in every addition, cantilevered terrace, and stair enclosure. But the spaces those walls now enclose, organized around a central atrium that brings light and air deep into the plan, belong to an altogether different era. The building no longer turns its back on the Alicante countryside; it frames it.

Concrete Continuity

The decision to build exclusively in board-formed concrete was not aesthetic preference. It was strategy. By extending the same material that defines the pre-existing squash court walls, the architects ensured that old and new read as a single mass rather than an awkward composite. Walk around the perimeter and the seams disappear: window openings are punched through concrete that could be original or recent, and the formwork grain runs consistently across both. The effect is less restoration than absorption.

Olive trees, already mature when the original courts were built, now stand in gravel beds beside the new facades, their gnarled trunks a useful counterpoint to the rectilinear concrete. It is a landscape pairing that feels inevitable rather than designed, which is usually a sign that the proportions are right.

The Central Atrium

Completing the H-plan created a natural void at the building's center, and the architects filled it with light rather than program. The central atrium is the organizational engine of the project. White columns carry concrete beams beneath square ceiling openings that wash the double-height space from above. All circulation passes through or alongside this volume, so orientation is never in question.

Continuous skylights run along corridors feeding off the atrium, pulling daylight deep into zones that would otherwise be buried between concrete walls. The result is a tempered atmosphere, cooler and more diffuse than the harsh Alicante sun outside, achieved through geometry alone rather than mechanical systems. It is passive design in the most literal sense: the building's shape does the work.

South Facade and Filtered Light

The south elevation faces the full force of Mediterranean sun. Here the architects deploy a deep cladding system of horizontal louvered panels set against the tall concrete wall, filtering solar radiation before it reaches the glazing behind. The single-story glass pavilion that emerges at ground level reads as a deliberately transparent insert against the opacity of the rest, a controlled moment of permeability where the building meets the landscape.

At twilight the facade reverses its behavior. Horizontal windows glow from within, and the louvered screens become silhouettes. The building shifts from a defensive posture against heat to a lantern signaling activity. It is a simple trick, but it transforms the reading of the project from an introverted concrete box to a building that participates in the life of its surroundings.

Thresholds, Terraces, and the Exterior Stair

A cantilevered concrete terrace on the upper level overlooks the tennis courts, with olive branches draping casually over its edge. The architects use this and a ground-floor porch to extend the interior outward, creating intermediate zones that blur the line between conditioned space and open air. In a climate where outdoor living is the default for much of the year, these thresholds are not decorative. They are program.

The exterior staircase, rising along the board-formed wall, is treated as a piece of the facade rather than an appendage. Narrow windows punctuate the ascent, turning what could be a fire-escape afterthought into a deliberate promenade that frames views of the olive grove at each landing. It is a small gesture that reveals how seriously the architects took the experience of moving through, and around, the building.

Interior Rooms and Material Restraint

Inside, the palette stays narrow: concrete ceilings, white plaster walls, and the occasional sliding glass door opening to a terrace. Rooms are generous but not extravagant. One space frames trees through a window with the precision of a viewfinder; another opens entirely through sliding panels to merge with the outdoors. The paneled concrete ceilings lend a domestic scale to rooms that serve a public sports function, a deliberate calibration that keeps the building from feeling institutional.

Built-in shelving and recessed niches in the white plaster walls suggest that the architects thought carefully about what happens after the architecture is finished. These are details that absorb daily use without complaint, and they signal a building designed for decades of wear rather than a single photoshoot.

Arrival and the Yellow Canopy

The new main entrance announces itself with a single, unmistakable element: an illuminated yellow canopy that punches through the otherwise monochrome concrete at dusk. It is the one moment where the architects allow color, and the restraint makes it land. You find the door because the building tells you where it is, not through signage but through light and saturation.

Inside the entrance zone, stacked white plaster volumes cantilever between concrete ceiling planes, creating a vertical compression that gives way to the open atrium beyond. The sequence from approach to arrival to orientation is compressed into about twenty meters, handled with the kind of spatial economy that suggests the architects knew exactly how much drama was needed and where to stop.

The Model

A physical scale model reveals the project's logic at a glance: a flat-roofed volume with ribbon glazing, a cantilevered upper floor, and the ghost of the existing walls still visible in the plan. It is a useful document because it shows how much of the final building was already implied by the found condition. The architects' contribution was not to impose a new form but to complete the one that was waiting.

Plans and Drawings

The site plan confirms the building's position within a tree-lined plot, roads on multiple sides, and the landscape beyond. Ground and upper floor plans make the H-shaped organization legible: two solid bars of program flanking a central void threaded with stairs and the skylit atrium. Sections reveal the double-height spaces, cantilevered terraces, and the relationship between ground-floor porch and upper-floor balcony. The axonometric drawing is the most telling: it shows how the stair, terraces, and enclosed upper room lock together into a compact whole that reads as a single volume from the outside despite its internal complexity.

Why This Project Matters

The challenge of building within and around existing structures is usually framed as a question of preservation versus intervention. This project sidesteps the binary. By adopting the same concrete as the original squash courts and completing a plan that was always latent, the architects produced a building where the distinction between old and new is essentially moot. The result is not a heritage project or a bold insertion; it is simply a sports facility that looks and works as though it has always been this way.

More broadly, the project demonstrates that a modest program in a secondary city can yield architecture of real conviction when the architects commit to a clear material strategy and refuse to overcomplicate. The board-formed concrete, the skylit atrium, the deep south facade, the single burst of yellow at the entrance: each decision serves the whole. In a discipline that often rewards complexity for its own sake, this kind of disciplined coherence is worth paying attention to.

Sport Facilities inside a Squash Court by Estudio Úbeda Valero and Roque Carlos Valero. Lead architects: Pablo Valero Escolano and Roque Carlos Valero. Alacant, Spain. 1,000 m². Completed 2025. Photography by Del Rio Bani.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If projects like this are the kind of work you want to make, uni.xyz is a place to publish your own, find collaborators, and enter design competitions.