Ice work: Grenoble's ambitious new ice rink transfigures everyday materials into a dazzling synthesis of light and colour.

The Winter Olympics of 1968 was a watershed in the evolution of Grenoble, strongly influencing subsequent patterns of urban growth. The town's new ice rink replaces the building originally designed for the games, the demise of which was hastened by evidence of potentially dangerous chlorine leakage.

For Isabel Herault and Yves Arnod, the project was never simply one of constructing a specialized sports building, but was also about the production of an architectural object and system which would lend spatial and visual cohesion to new town Grenoble. This is a case where commissioning architects with close, local associations led, not as it often does, to blandness and conformity, but to a completely atypical solution, informed by the subtleties of local knowledge. The new building is bigger than the late '60s original, providing two rinks to accommodate simultaneous demand for facilities by professionals and general public alike. There is little difference in the sizes of the principal and secondary rinks (60 x 30m and 56 x 26m respectively), but only the main one has full stadium facilities. It has 3500 seats and is geared for the various ritual practices of ice-skating competitions and top level professional ice hockey, with extensive press boxes and entertainment lounges.

The facade is a continuous curving and undulating band wrapped around the two major interior volumes. Transmission of interior form to the exterior is one of many expressive manoeuvres achieved by the building's skin. In contrast to the expected characteristics of a flagship of civic identity, the architects have rejected all references to local materials, and have opted for the cheapest mass-produced cladding. In fact, the inner layer is made of that most common-place of materials: heavy duty corrugated metal, used universally for warehouses, cargo containers and building-site cabins. The outer layer is no less rudimentary: semi-translucent, polycarbonate sheeting, simply bracketed and screwed onto the metal with a 500mm gap in between.

Between these two ordinary skins lies the means of their transfiguration: graphics and fibre-optics. Nantes-based artist Jackie Dumonteil has designed a blue and white spray-paint maculation of the inner, corrugated surface. It follows a previous collaboration for the garden-facing facade of a university campus building, also in Grenoble. There, the effect was essentially one of painted camouflage. For the ice rink, Dumonteil has taken the notion of an environmentally adapted, graphic intervention a step further, to represent or mimic elements of the building's internal activities and its social context. The markings push more toward abstract than figurative forms, but manage to hold on to various figurative possibilities, staving off a complete collapse into pattern. They evoke movement -- of figures gliding across ice, of shadows, of clouds -- but also seem to cohere into monumental, spray-can graffiti.

Fibre-optic wires allow the graphics to take on a nocturnal aspect. Their intervention is less subtle, but is distinctive enough to act as a non-linguistic sign for the building and may prove sufficiently seductive to attract permanent colonies of night life to this part of the new town.

The exterior form of the building--which, in its simplest terms, is a rounded rectangle -- also makes an explicit gesture of affiliation toward one of the key landmark modern buildings of Grenoble. Across the road to the south of the rink is a 1970s conference and trade fair facility by Jean Prouve, its corners neatly rounded in a characteristic application of metal panel construction.

The open, tubular steel framework of the roof spreads a firmament of trapezoids across the rinks and could be interpreted as homage to the legacy of Prouve. The architects liken the total form to a muscle in contraction, bulging over the space of the stadium rink, creating a shallow dome, and turning concave to cross the much shorter expanse of the width of the practice rink. This metal canopy projects well beyond the facade on all sides and its main structural liaison is with a series of reinforced-concrete columns (42 in the stadium rink, 26 in the secondary rink). These are hinged at top and base in anticipation of Alpine seismic activity.

Interiors are the result of an unashamed celebration of an entirely synthetic environment. They are an expressionistic mix of raw materials, typography, colour and artificial lighting, involving often quite bizarre detailing -- such as a series of rounded slabs in turquoise rubber for the benches of the public changing rooms, and bright green pegboard for the ceilings of the press boxes.

Herault Arnod have devised a comprehensive programme and fusion of structural systems, aesthetics and urban stage setting. Given the originality of its styling, the building's sense of vitality should prove durable. But the complex relationships between structure and decoration may mean that the building's success will be heavily reliant on the dedicated application of future maintenance.