Rehabilitación del Palacio de Deportes de la Comunidad de Madrid

Restoration of Madrid´s sports centre

The former Sports Centre of Madrid?s Territorial Authority mostly collapsed in 2001, due to a fire initiated on its wooden deck while maintenance works were taking place. This article talks about the important restoration that took place for its renewal and the inclusion to Madrid?s 2012 Olympic candidature, as one of the main proposals of the sports facilities. The new building was designed by the architect Enrique Hermoso, and occupies the same area than the former one, although the distribution of the space inside is notably different, extended and adapted to the new safety and multifunctional buildings use regulations, and the addition of three large underground car parking stages. After a short definition of the building, the structural conceptual scheme for the Sports Centre is defined. Due to the large number of the different structural elements that form part of the working mechanism of the structure, we first define the structure, so that the explanation of the structural behaviour of the load bearing system of the building could be better understood. Afterwards, the constructive process known as upward-downward that allowed for the simultaneous construction of the lowest areas of the car park and the upper deck is described. The article ends with the description of the most peculiar details of the structure.