1st International UEFA Football and IRB Rugby Stadium Award.

The new Andorra National Stadium is set in a very narrow space facing the Valira River.

The surrounding sports buildings are very bulky and the rest of the buildings that occupy the mountain give a marked vertical and constrained character to the site. The width of the site is 85 metres and a free playing field of 130×80 metres is to be located.

With these premises, a low building is proposed, which does not want to compete in height precisely to stand out, giving value to the void. However, it is proposed to cover the service street that separates the field from the two sports halls, as a strategy to position the grandstand stands facing east. With this decision we managed, at the same time, to significantly reduce the height of the two sports buildings by about 4 meters.

This same covering platform is the large bridge-square over the Valira River and the natural access for the public from Salou Avenue. From this level, six levels of stands descend to the playing field, surrounding three sides of the field, seating 3,000 spectators in the first phase. These stands are actually a depression of the large access platform to the field.

The main services building is below this level at the opposite end of the river, with access from the Baixada del Molí as the base of the stadium.

The main facades of the Stadium are on the two north and south sides, and rest on the large access platform. They are made of translucent glass and occupy a thickness of one meter, allowing retractable stands to be placed inside that make it possible to expand the capacity of the Stadium by 1,850 more people, making a total of 4,850 seated spectators between the two phases. These retractable stands, housed in the bulk of the façade, aim to ensure that the building does not alter its volume or its urban presence when the expansion for the second phase must be carried out and, at the same time, they ensure that the Stadium does not look too empty at a capacity more normal daily life, around two thousand people.

The image of the new stadium is shown as a light box, where images and text can be projected with LED technology, with the cover separated by a one-meter strip, which gives a lightness and transparency that, once again, wants to exploit the virtues of empty space, so lacking in the area. At the four corners rise lighting screens that span across the deck and gesture up to direct light onto the pitch.

Given the vertical nature of the environment, the roof is projected as another façade. It is a continuous plan one meter thick, like the facades, with a superior finish of laminated glass with integrated photovoltaic cells, which will provide energy of 250,000 kW/year, equivalent to the annual expenditure of 100 homes. Rainwater is taken to a tank located under steps to be used for irrigation and cisterns. These measures allow us to achieve the official qualification (nearZEBuildings – buildings close to zero energy).