Prologue. Sport Architecture. Design Construction Management

In the history of civilisations, the meaning of sport and its venues is a fundamental element of intellectual manifestation and representation that effectively reflects the importance the culture of sport and the cultivated management of leisure have had in the definition of the identity of peoples. There was no age when entire communities did not use sport activity, and more in general ludic-recreational activity, in order to stage either material or immaterial iconic manifestations of their own identity. The relationship between such activities and the definition of the venues designed to host them within anthropised contexts represents the barometer of the cultural expression and intimate soul of a collectivity. Such spaces structure themselves starting from the genius loci existing within the memorial structure of their communities that, as such, project such places to identify eloquent and evocative realms of the anthropological experience, representations of material and identity culture that impress a symbolic imprint in the surrounding territory. It is important to remark how, during the evolution of the history of architecture, sport venues always had the distinctive character Norberg-Schulz also identified in existential space, or the realm that effectively embraces the fundamental relations among human beings, environment and landscape. The relationship between sport and culture remains as easily recognisable as it was two millennia ago, and is so unchanged in any realm of contemporary society that it often affects its preferences and costumes. Consider the role sport architecture played in the foundation of Western civilisations, from ancient Greece to Rome – those architectures were the metaphors of the evolution of building techniques, of socio-political organisation, of the urban planning vision of a civilisation and of the cultural supremacy of a cultural group over the others.