This public sports facility acts as a dynamic engine in Montpellier’s Antigone District. The strategy behind the design aims to integrate the facility into its surroundings by way of contrast, as the construction represents a departure from the classical architecture of Antigone. Taking its place within the succession of Antigone’s squares, the glass and steel construction opens generously onto the pedestrian axis as the final piece of the neighborhood.

Enhancing the sense of transparency and openness, the design is stripped down to the essentials. The light-filled spaces are unified by the roof suspended from cables over the pools below.

The entrance lobby provides an immediate view of the pools and the sports halls. Visitors, who enter at the top level of the public seating, look down on the sports pool below, with the leisure pool to the right. Spectators can watch competitions from either side of the sports pool. The leisure and sports areas, while endowed with their own atmosphere, are designed as two squares merging into one, fully integrated, visually, spatially and functionally.

With 10 lanes and underwater portholes, the Venus Olympic pool was designed as a venue for national and international competitions, and is adapted to the requirements of swimming, water-polo and synchronized swimming Olympic-standards training.

The facility also includes the five-lane Aphrodite training pool, a leisure pool equipped with massage baths, slides and rapids, a solarium terrace, a gymnasium equipped for fitness training, and a multifunctional sports hall (suitable for handball, basket ball, volley ball, etc.). The automatic retractable roof opens the section over the leisure pool that becomes an outdoor pool during the summer months.