1. PREFACE
This position paper aims to present the advancement of the  research, focusing in partiular on the work done in the last months concerning  the study of the Catalan context. However, it seems necessary to recall the essential contents  of the tesis: theme, historical time-span and case-studies, interpreting keys.
Theme
The thesis studies the  evolution of facilities for sport and leisure since the post-war years till  today. Although this topic is already studied by historians, sociologists and  geographers, the experimentation and construction of buildings for leisure has  yet to be fully investigated by   architectural research. In the first phase of  the research has been studied the contribution of several disciplines that had  introduced new paradigms and themes about the typological and settlement  characteristics of the sport spaces.
The study does not  focus on facilities specialized for the competitions, as many publications on  stadia and sport palaces are already edited, but it deals with multifunctional  facilities facing with the urban scale, related with the context in which are  located and with a high level of attractiveness. My research will focus on  facilities related to this.
Since scholars agree  about the shift, during the Fifties and Sixties, from a notion of sport as a  structured practice (organized and/or agonistic) to the spread of a free  behavior and experience, the so called "sport-for-all".
Historical time-span and  case-studies
The research aims  therefore to investigate the development of what is known as the sport and  leisure centre since the Fifties till today, in its progressive articulation  and distinction, through a selection of case-studies which could link the  'politics' of the provision of sports practice and the 'systematic'  construction of facilities in temporal span of twenty years articulated as  follows:
This periodization  helps to make evidence of the relationship among customer, uses and  settlement's characters of spaces for sports practice. Based on this it a first  hypothesis was drawing up about the selected context for the comparison:
The research, once  testing the selected context, will focus on the identification of peculiarities  and invariants of the leisure centre. This structure of the research aims to  the organization of a double comparative analysis: diachronic (a cross-cutting  study of the time-spans) and synchronic (an horizontal study of the  time-spans).
Interpreting keys   
The general literature on the issue[4]  gives hints that could be taken as thesis of the research, here preliminary  drafted as interpreting keys:
The research aims to:
2. RESEARCH TOOLS AND METHODS  
The research was  conducted through:
The collected materials are organized as  follows: