The new €400 million multipurpose arena designed by HOK and ERRE blends innovative design, sustainable features and flexible spaces for year-round events.
Roig Arena in Valencia will open on September 6 with a tribute concert to Nino Bravo, the celebrated Spanish pop singer. The multipurpose venue, developed by Licampa 1617 and designed by HOK and ERRE, transforms the underutilized Quatre Carreres district into an international destination for sporting, music, cultural and corporate events. The arena, home to the men’s and women’s teams of Valencia Basket Club, is integrated with a new two-hectare public park, creating a civic anchor that invites year-round use. The project was financed entirely by Valencian businessman Juan Roig with his personal assets.
Designated a pedestrian-priority zone, the transition between the park and arena includes stepped terraces that extend the interior experience outdoors and create multipurpose community spaces. A grand staircase with a dynamic media display, “The Eye,” defines the arrival experience and signals the arena’s presence in the urban landscape. A daylit concourse transforms on non-event days into a food and beverage market modeled after Europe’s historic mercados.
“Roig Arena is a celebration of place. The design embraces Valencia’s distinctive culture and climate, creating a shared civic anchor and metaphorical living room for the city,” said John Rhodes, director of Sports + Entertainment at HOK. “Inside, the building’s unprecedented flexibility, intimate seating bowl and technological innovation create a truly immersive experience. Much like the city of Valencia, the arena offerings are diverse, unique and hospitable. Roig Arena will be an anchor for the city, the center of a sports park, a catalyst for vibrant growth and a destination experience for all.”
Innovative Ceramic Facade
Roig Arena is the first sports project with an entirely ceramic skin. A total of 8,600 ceramic fins, locally manufactured by Pamesa Grupo Empresarial and designed by ERRE, are arranged like scales that float on a curved steel frame. At night, the facade glows with colored lighting. A full-scale 1:1 prototype of the facade system was built prior to installation, demonstrating its constructive feasibility. The design team opted to use a single modular piece measuring 1.00 x 1.20 meters. Standardizing the size of the fins simplified installation, reduced waste, and lowered the project’s carbon footprint. Parametric modeling defined the placement of each element, with angles ranging between 10 and 63 degrees. By day, the fins—designed with a texture inspired by the surface of a basketball and finished in three subtle shades of blue glaze—filter natural light into the exterior terraces. By night, the facade reveals its full potential as a dynamic LED video-illumination system with RGB-White technology, capable of interacting with real-time data to create a spectacular light display.
The arena’s design is rooted in sustainable strategies that celebrate the port city, including passive cooling to combat Valencia’s warm climate, photovoltaic panels and locally sourced materials.
“From the very beginning, we were clear that we wanted an architecture that engaged with the city and could be experienced even before entering its interior. This vision is materialized in the design of the wide corridors that wrap around the building like terraces, protected by the iconic ceramic fin facade that filters sunlight while maintaining visual connections with the surroundings. The result is a fluid and organic circulation that creates pleasant outdoor gathering spaces where people can meet and share the excitement of the event before stepping into the court,” say Jose Martí, Amparo Roig, and M. Ángeles Ros, partner architects at ERRE.
Advanced Technology
Inside the venue, the team used HOK’s proprietary Scrum tool to optimize sightlines, geometry and hospitality configurations in the seating bowl. The arena can accommodate 15,600 fans for basketball games and expand to seat 20,000 for concerts and other events. Diverse seating options include premium clubs and VIP dining experiences.
On non-event days, flexible support spaces including an expansive exhibition hall, banquet space, meeting rooms and auxiliary kitchens allow the venue to host conferences, tournaments and civic events, maximizing the building’s flexibility.
Suspended above the arena’s main court is the highest-resolution scoreboard in Europe, accompanied by the continent’s largest indoor videowall, covering 500 square meters, and a 220-sq.-m. LED ribbon display encircling the entire perimeter. On the exterior, the monumental multimedia screen “The Eye” dominates the northwest facade with its 300-sq.-m. surface, creating a striking visual landmark.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.hok.com ’
