Nanbu Eye Gymnasium | Winner Designs
Nanbu Eye Gymnasium by FTA Group

Nanbu Eye Gymnasium

Platinum A' Design Award Winner 2024

FTA Group's Nanbu Eye Gymnasium represents a distinguished achievement in contemporary civic architecture, exemplifying the synthesis of sculptural ambition with functional program requirements that characterizes the most accomplished public recreational facilities of the early twenty-first century. The design appears to engage with parametric and organic modernist traditions, perhaps evoking the biomorphic investigations of practitioners who seek to dissolve boundaries between landscape and built form through continuously flowing geometries. The gymnasium's remarkable dome structure, crowned with its crystalline geodesic lattice, suggests careful consideration of both structural efficiency and atmospheric spectacle, the triangulated glazing system permitting interior illumination to emanate outward as a beacon within the urban nocturnal landscape while presumably admitting natural daylight during daytime hours. The warm linear lighting that traces the building's horizontal bands and surrounding promenades demonstrates sophisticated environmental lighting design, creating welcoming pedestrian circuits while establishing visual hierarchy and wayfinding clarity. The planimetric organization evokes an eye motif, suggesting metaphorical readings related to vision, perception, and the gymnasium's role as a place of focused attention and physical cultivation. The waterfront siting appears purposeful, positioning the facility as a mediating element between urban infrastructure and natural hydrological systems, the sinuous building edges echoing riverine morphology while the outdoor courts nestle within protective architectural embrace. The integration of landscape, architecture, and infrastructure visible in this composition suggests holistic site thinking that considers the gymnasium as urban catalyst rather than isolated object. One might contemplate how this facility serves as gathering place for community vitality, physical wellness, and civic pride, its luminous presence transforming the evening skyline into an invitation for collective engagement and individual achievement.

Located by the Jialing River, this gymnasium achieves harmony, openness and interaction with nature. The design is carried out from the three core concepts of earthscape, integration and openness. The overall project is conceived as an earthscape, just like a picture scroll in one stroke along the Jialing River. The city and nature are merged together, the architecture and landscape are integrated, a continuous spatial sequence is formed along the waterfront.