An ice rink building can be described as an active machine. It needs electric energy to fulfill its purpose: to provide artificial ice to - initially - extend the ice skating season.
Nowadays the need of artificial ice has increased, since the oppurtunity to practice the ice skating sport outside with natural circumstances ceased to exist. The main cause of this development is the increasing annual temperature, which has been a result of global warming.
Due to this climate change, an ice rink building will soon be the only means to practice the sport.
Another development is the increasing demands of the ice skaters to have the right circumstances to enhance their sporting performance.
The architectural typology of the ice rink had been initiated in the 1980’s, before that speed skating on artificial ice had mainly been practiced outdoors. This newly introduced architecture merely played a role as a shell of protection, but is low performing in controlling the right circumstances for high-quality ice and comfort of the sporter.
The ice rink building nowadays is still generally challenged in providing a controllable environment and the typology is still associated with being occupied in winter, and vacated in summer. The ice rink typology can be described as unsustainable.
The directive of the research is to find architectural means to improve an ice rink in its sustainable characteristics. This is mainly focussed on lowering the energy demand by application of architectural solutions, and compensating this energy demand by integrating energy producing elements.
For this research, mainly the usage/operation stage will be taken into account. For the construction stage (choice of materials and their embodied energy) only assumptions will be made to improve the buildings energy sustainability. The result will be an energy neutral ice rink.
To gain insight in the building requirements, case studies of ice rink predecessors and questionnaires on larger potential user groups were necessary. To go into depth of the building characteristics and usefull feedback on how to design an ice rink, specialists in the ice rink field were interviewed. Where needed the research was expanded with literature studies.
Outcomes of the research are, among others, a roof and a double facade acting as an climatic buffer, insulation in the building envelope, avoidance of heat radiation by the sun or surrounding materials, strong climate regulation devices, and a hermetically sealed sport area as protection from its outer environment. In the end the building design will provide an ice sport venue in winter and multifunctional venue in summer with its own fully controllable micro climate.
These solutions will be applied in a program of requirements for a design proposal of the ice rink of the future.