Boules et gym: This gymnasium was built economically, yet it responds to its setting and incorporates ingenious lighting ideas

Architectural Review, The, Feb, 2002 by Ben Azulay

The Ruffi sports complex, by Remy Marciano, fills out a rectangular site in the third arrondissement of Marseilles, on the north side of the city's harbour. The immediate environs are a mixture of the semi-industrial and housing estates. To the north-west is the church of St Martin. Underneath is the tunnel for a new freight train line, part of a larger programme to improve the city's transport.

Marciano's complex, too, is part of a larger improvement scheme, this time to revitalize the area. As well as a large and elegantly enclosed gymnasium building measuring 24 x 44m in plan and 7m high, the site incorporates adjacent changing rooms, courts for outdoor sports such as hand- and basketball, a garden and two plots of rough ground for the popular game of petanque, the Provencal name for boules. The complex supplies local residents with much-needed facilities, is a new dynamic force in the neighbourhood and a harmonious open space.

The various parts of the complex are disposed on either side of the site's main axis. This continues that of the church nave and is traced by a bisecting path that runs between outdoor courts to the gym and changing rooms on the south-east corner. As you look down the path from the gym's entrance, the church is framed by the buildings, the connection subliminally registering the conjunction of Marseilles's traditional Latin roots and its vigorous sports culture.

As a building, the gym, which contains three indoor courts, is a response to the semi-industrial, shed vernacular of the region and is a powerful blocky presence in the midst of anonymous housing. For practical reasons (to contain the balls), and for privacy, the main envelope is solid and textural, composed of a patchwork of concrete panels of different sizes and colours. This opaque base is surmounted by three interconnecting light boxes running across the structure's main grain, each indicating the court inside and each set at a different angle so that the building's silhouette has great sculptural presence. At night, the light boxes, overshooting the long walls on both sides, wash the walls with luminance so the building becomes an extraordinary beacon.