Gallery: Gigantic Bubbly Vitam’Parc ...

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Photo © Nicolás Pinzón

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Vitam’Parc is a health, sports, and leisure center in Neydens, France that encapsulates a range of facilities within gigantic bubbly transparent domes! Located just a few minutes away from Geneva and immersed within the undulating hills of the French countryside, the center hosts sports areas, a hotel, and commercial space. Designed by Spanish architects L35 and covering a whopping 25 square miles, the center believes in the value of building good relationships with people and providing quality products and services that have a positive impact on health and a low impact on the earth.

L35‘s main architectural goal was to design a set of shells that would enclose the different areas of the complex and fit organically within the landscape, despite the project’s large-scale dimensions. The architects called upon Reynaers to create an undulating, bubbly space that fits with the countryside’s typography. The structure features a frame made from wood and recycled aluminum, and it’s covered with a polymer called ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (aka ETFE).

ETFE is a plastic material that we’ve seen previously used in the Eden Project’s domes, but the Vitam’Parc is the first one to use the technology in France.