Collider Activity Center
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
Type: Competition / final 5 (369)
Author: Radionica arhitekture
Design team: Fani Frković, Vedrana Ivanda, Domagoj Ivanović, Bruno Kostanić, Iva Pejić, Goran Rako, Josip Sabolić
Designed: 2013
Area: 9.000 m2


In a large sports amusement park in the suburbs of Sofia we build a small artificial "mountain". It stands in its surroundings as an "island mountain" or Uluru as the Australian natives called the large lonely red rock in their desert. For the Aborigines Uluru is a holy place and they never climb it. Our "island mountain", let us temporarily call it Uluru 2, has exactly the opposite function. It is there to be climbed constantly. For that purpose we gave it a glass umbrella to allow climbing while it's raining, snowing, or at night when the space under the umbrella is lit by spotlights that turn this little mountain or this big rock into a lighthouse visible from all over Sofia.
But this is not a "meteor", it's a building. Its three basic layers show themselves similarly to onion layers when you peel it. The first outer layer is the "envelope", the glass facade. It is the raincoat that protects climbers from extreme weather. From too much cold, heat, rain, snow, wind or sun. When external conditions are favorable, the facade opens and internal atmosphere becomes external. The second layer is the hall, a kind of a "cytoplasm". The space between the facade and the climbing surface. This is the place of entering the building or exiting in to the park, the space of overlapping where the all the paths and visitors meet. Those who came to climb, those who are just hanging out or those watching others climb from the terraces on the "roof" of the rock. The third inner layer is the "core", a set of specialized spaces linked by the elevators and stairs. From the restaurant at the bottom to the bar on the top. Occasionally these core assemblies break through the outer layers bridging the hall to reach the facade and allow the visitors and employees to have natural lighting, ventilation and view.