MVRDV hits the 'Sweet Spot' to win National Badminton Training Centre competition in Shenzhen

The chance to design China’s new National Badminton Training Centre complex on the eastern edge of Shenzhen has been granted to MVRDV after winning an international competition in collaboration with Huayi Design. 

MVRDV won with a main Centre building whose signature mimics the shape of a 787-foot-long racket head, with a grid pattern underneath a matrix of PV panels and skylights. The complete proposal calls for the construction of three new buildings with an outdoor area for public use. The latter forms in the T-shape confluence of outdoor promenades, connecting each building and stepping down into a tribune with a variety of courts serving multi-sport activities placed piecemeal across the program.

This is called 'The Sweet Spot,' and links to a previously unplanned northern lot underneath the flyway for the diagonally-cutting Pingyan Expressway at the northwestern boundary of the site plan.

Other buildings in the complex include a smaller racket-shaped National Fitness Center and a 23-story mixed hotel and residence component shaped like a shuttlecock for pros and their trainers to the south of the main structure. The privacy of athletes has been maintained with a "lower ground" circulation area located below the Sweet Spot and outfitted with additional sports science research areas.

The firm's founding partner Jacob van Rijs says it is intended as a "celebration" of sport and of badminton in particular. He added that it was an “easily readable concept” to propose and resolve in what he describes as an "efficient, sustainable, and social" way.

This is a large-scale project totaling over 1.4 million square feet. Another bid for a different multi-building complex design from the firm, Tianfu Software Park in Chengdu, also won an international competition in January.