Designed by ELS Architecture and Urban Design, To build a new sports center in Oakland?s Ira Jinkins Park and make fitness and recreation accessible to the low-income Brookfield neighborhood has been the city?s dream for more than 20 years. After San Francisco?s 2012 Olympics bid failed in 2002 and dashed plans to build an Olympic training center on the site, the city collaborated with ELS Architecture and Urban Design to make the project feasible anyway, refining the program, seeking new funding sources, and breaking the project into two phases to build the core components first.
Photography: David Wakely
The first phase opened in June 2011, a state-of-the-art 25,000-square-foot community sports, recreation, and aquatics center. It includes a natatorium with an indoor leisure pool, a dance and aerobics studio, a fitness center, locker rooms, and a lobby. A learning/media center helps improve student academic success while also providing space for senior gatherings and community meetings. Future phases will add soccer and baseball fields as well as a two-court gymnasium with a suspended running track and a 25 yd x 25 m competition pool to replace the site?s existing Brookfield/Ira Jinkins Recreation Center. Photography: David Wakely
In contrast to the existing community center, which is relatively windowless and surrounded by trees, the new center is a glass building designed to provide extensive natural light and transparency and to invite people in. On the exterior, the u...