Sports and Green Spaces Drive the Shift Toward Wellbeing

On the occasion of the panel dedicated to the Wellness City, Andreas Kipar tells Sabrina Orrico how sport, green spaces, and livable cities become a unified whole that calls on us to take an active role. Our Parco dello Sport in Lugano is an excellent example of design that places Nature at the center.

“The project of Parco dello Sport al Maglio begins with the course of the Cassarate River and the ability to accommodate additional functions in hydraulic compatibility. The sports facilities adapt to hydraulic requirements: designing in this way, with a landscape integration shaped by these needs, has led to a new form and a new composition,” the architect says.

The Parco dello Sport is predominantly green, and all its functions are nature-based, designed to use as little concrete as possible. “This is, in a way, the meaning of the Wellness City: we must adapt to what nature offers us, without overturning it.”

“Staying in Lugano, we know that the municipality has changed the paradigm in the PAL, the Luganese Agglomeration Program, shifting from a flow that began with infrastructure, moved to urban insertion, and ended with landscape, to an inverted structure that starts with the landscape and ends with infrastructure. The results—and the impact on everyone’s daily life—are truly different.”