SPENCE

The Sports and Business Center “Vojvodina” (SPC “Vojvodina”), popularly known by the acronym Spens (full name: European Table Tennis Championship Novi Sad), is a sports and business center located in Novi Sad, in the Stari Grad part. The construction of the hall began in May 1979, and it was opened on April 14, 1981, for the 36th World Table Tennis Championship. The Sports and Business Center “Vojvodina” consists of a hall, outdoor sports fields, the “Karađorđe” stadium, and a garage with parking space. The surface area of the location where the “Spens” hall is built is almost 200,000m²², of which the building itself occupies around 85,000 m².².

Spens has two halls: a large one (capacity of 7,000 seats) and a small one (capacity of 1,000 seats), an ice rink (capacity of 1,600), an indoor swimming pool, a bowling alley, training and competition halls for boxing, judo, and table tennis, 2 press centers, and an amphitheater. In addition to sports facilities, it houses around 215 premises, in which numerous shops are located.

The project task aimed to arrange the complex of swimming pools, whose significance is reflected not only in the needs of the citizens and competitions but also as a significant destination for training camps for water sports (swimming, water polo, diving, dives into the water, artistic swimming) at the regional level. The complex itself included an existing swimming pool, a children’s pool (for non-swimmer training), and a pool with diving platforms. The children’s pool (for non-swimmer training) was made in dimensions of 12 by 25 meters and a maximum depth of one meter. The diving pool was made with dimensions of 20 by 25 meters, so that the diving platforms were at heights of one, three, five, seven and a half, and ten meters, while the minimum depth of the pool was not less than 1.8 meters. The approximate dimensions of the children’s pool for younger age groups are five by five meters, with a maximum depth of half a meter.