Architect: TOMPOS Csaba
The up-to-date, continuously operating practice ice rink can also be used as a venue for international tournaments. It is used mostly by skaters for training and competitions, but it also accommodates skating courses for children and adults, moreover it can be rented for conferences and company sports events as well.
The Practice Ice Rink was built as a replacement of the ice rink in the Budapest Sports Hall, which had burned down in 1999. It is located between the Kisstadion (Small Sports Hall) and Népstadion (People’s Stadium), on the site of the tennis courts. The main entrance and staircase of the building is located on the north-eastern side, leading to the spectators’ stand, the warm-up rooms and the television broadcast booths. The storeroom for filling the electric ice resurfacers is placed at the end of the hall, together with the drain tank. 156 sportsmen and sports managers can follow the events from the two rows of mobile stands installed between the fence and the corridor of the changing rooms. On the second floor, above the changing room, the stand supported by cantilever steel brackets accommodates 180 spectators, their escape route is provided through the open staircase. The size of the rink is adjusted to the international standards of figure skating, its floor-to-ceiling height is minimum seven metres and its size is 30×60 metres, surrounded by a fence. The rink is surrounded in an L-shape, on three levels, by technical rooms on the short side and changing rooms, the medical massage room and the spectators’ stand on the longer side. The technical rooms for the operation of the facility, such as the freezing machine room and an equipment storeroom are located at the eastern end of the entrance hall. There are offices, a multipurpose room and a kitchenette on the first floor, and terraces, a ballet-room, the cooling towers, a ventilation machine room, a boiler-room and a changing room on the second floor.
The hall is roofed by drip-free fluted metal sheet with heat insulation and waterproofing, supported by steel purlins mounted on trusses made of hollow section steel, fixed to reinforced concrete pillars and bridging a span of 40 metres. There are acoustic boards, the rink lighting system and loudspeakers installed between the trusses. In other parts of the building, in-situ reinforced concrete slabs have been built on the reinforced concrete structures. The external walls are 100 millimetre thick sandwich panels with factory painted, micro-rib metal facing and rock wool thermal insulation. The building is protected from the sun by cantilevered pergolas on all sides.
The building was used for practice at the European Figure Skating Championship and also at the Junior Speed Skating World Championship, held in Budapest in 2003. In 2005 it was the venue of a Speed Skating World Cup.
Location: Budapest XIV., Istvánmezei út 3–5.
Built: 2002
Architect: TOMPOS Csaba
Associate architect: B. ZÁRAY Ilona
Interior architect: SZÉKELYI Zsuzsa
Area: 4300 m2