Sports Arena · Headless Collective

The project

Warm, high-energy, and built for a sporting life.

The Sports Arena sits on 1.2 acres in Khajaguda, between Hyderabad's Financial District and the Gachibowli corporate belt. It reworks a tired municipal complex into a place built around pickleball, with badminton, a football turf, retail, a cafe and dorms woven around the courts.

The plan starts from the people who show up: the school kid picking up pickleball, the corporate team unwinding after work, the weekend regular. Their activities set the spaces, and the spaces set the mood. Warm materials, red steel, brick and stone, greenery on every level, and a glazed cafe that keeps the place social long after the last match.

Built around pickleball, and everything that happens around the game.

The whole picture

Aerial view of the Sports Arena at dusk, courts and cafe under one warm-lit roof — Bird's-eye view. Courts, cafe and retail pulled into one warm-lit block.

Ground floor plan of the Khajaguda Sports Arena — Ground floor plan. Pickleball courts at the core, retail and cafe along the street, the cricket ground kept behind.

The front

The facade is patterned in pickleballs.

The street face is a perforated metal screen, its pattern drawn from the pickleball itself. By day it filters the Hyderabad sun into the cafe and the courts. By night it glows from inside, a warm signal that the place is open and full.

You arrive through it. A planted forecourt, tables spilling out of the glazed cafe, and a slot in the screen that pulls you past the greenery to the courts beyond.

The entry forecourt: glazed cafe, planting, and the pickleball-perforated screen glowing at dusk

The entry: a planted forecourt, the glazed cafe, and the pickleball-perforated screen.

Inside and out

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