A team of Brazilian architects, urbanists and engineers have designed for a university sports campus with a football field and running track on its roof.

OSPA settled on the striking design when faced with the challenge of building a fully-equipped sports facility for a Brazilian university in a relatively small area.

“Although the lot is small, we planned a campus with constant activity and public and fluid space,” said the architects. “It is necessary to distribute classrooms, sport courts and social areas in a way that is safe, encourages mobility and integrates with the streets at the back and in the front of the campus. The solution was to elevate the pitch.”

The facility’s indoor sports courts sit directly beneath the rooftop football pitch and are surrounded by a walkway, observation benches and classrooms.

The public can access the rooftop via a spiral staircase located in a plaza situated at the building’s entrance.

“The premise of the project is to articulate urban relations, making it more than a public institution,” said the architects. “We have designed a public space.”

The project won a national architecture competition in 2014 and remains in the executive development stage. The project client is the Federal University of Health Sciences in the city of Porto Alegre.