Heidbergbad swimming pool in Braunschweig

Location Braunschweig, Germany

Client / operator Stadtbad Braunschweig Sport und Freizeit GmbH

Architects pbr Planungsbüro Rohling AG Architekten Ingenieure DE – 49076 Osnabrück www.pbr.de

Author Frauke Stroman

Photos Christian Bierwagen

Official opening March 2021

FIVE STARTING BLOCKS AND FOUR LANES

NEW HEIDBERGBAD SWIMMING POOL IN BRAUNSCHWEIG

The new building of the Heidbergbad swimming pool in the south of Braunschweig not only replaces the old indoor swimming pool, but also helps to extend the facility‘s service life, reduce energy costs and spruce up the bathing opportunities of the city in eastern Lower Saxony with its population of just under 250,000. The architects pbr have fused the new and existing buildings into a single ensemble.

The Heidbergbad built in 1973 is the most recent and most varied of the pools belonging to „Europabad“ series in Braunschweig. The term „Europabad“ denotes not an inflexible ground plan, but rather a combination of cost-saving ideas.

Strengthening identity The approximately 13,000 m² site is located south of Braunschweig‘s city centre, with a park-like green area in its immediate vicinity. The new building has been positioned on the site in a rectangular structure in place of the previous building and at an angle to the road. The new pool is accessed from the existing forecourt.

Old and new become one A single-storey structure with a basement for plant, the new building has been erected right up against the competition pool built in 1993. The new foyer has the same height as the competition pool and thus blends in perfectly with the local situation. In the design of the façade, importance

has been attached to merging the new building and the existing structure into a single entity. A dual-skin construction with a cladding of light-coloured fibre cement panels has been adopted, which, technically, displays durability and low maintenance and, in terms of design, continues the mineral-matt look and colour scheme of the existing concrete block façade.

Access and spatial programme Pool users enter the new swimming pool via the entrance hall in the south, which offers a view into the pool hall via spacious glazing. Adjacent to the foyer is the ground-level changing area for the new pool and sauna; the existing changing rooms of the old competition pool in the basement can also be accessed from here. In addition to four communal changing rooms and two changing areas that can be assigned flexibly to women, men or families, the changing facilities include a sauna room with an integrated cubicle changing room.

Varied bathing opportunities The pool offers its users, ranging from those with sporting ambitions to the very youngest, a varied array of bathing

opportunities. This bathing area has been positioned along the glass wall of the existing competition pool. It consists of a 25-m competition pool with a water surface area of around 250 m² and a water depth of 1.80 m, a teaching pool with almost 80 m² of surface area and a depth ranging from zero to 1.60 m thanks to a height-adjustable floor, and the roughly 15 m² children‘s pool with its wet play area.

In the design of the pool deck, special attention has been paid to making its use as variable as possible. This is made possible not only by the height-adjustable floor in the teaching pool, but also by the possibility of adding a lane to the swimmers‘ pool during training. For this purpose, the swimming lane lines are set tighter and a fifth starting block is fitted. The swimmers‘ pool is separated acoustically, but not visually, from the teaching pool by a large expanse of glazing. A continuous glass wall provides a view of the existing competition pool from both new pools. Via glazing on the eastern side, the toddlers‘ paddling pool looks out.

Sauna with access to greenery The new sauna area adjoins the bathing area to the north and can be accessed from the pool hall. The sauna has been organised as a compact unit with showers for a pre-sauna clean and for cooling off afterwards. The lounge and rest rooms are generously glazed and look out into the sauna garden.

Here, variety is ensured by Finnish sauna and a bio-sauna as well as two rest rooms – one of which is a deep relaxation room.

The entire ground floor level of the indoor pool is accessible. Ramps supplement ground-level access where necessary. A wayfinding system and a pool lift also help people with impaired mobility or sight to use the pool.

Coordinated fire protection The storey below the swimming pool is used to house the swimming pool plant and equipment. The supply lines as well as the ropes for separating the pool lanes are routed through the floor on the ground floor. Consequently, the area in the basement under the swimmer‘s pool is functionally linked to the swimming areas on the ground floor, so that complete isolation of the storeys was not possible and the fire protection system thus encompasses both.

Three water cycles In all pools, the water is treated by means of a vacuum filter system. While the swimmers‘ pool uses vertical inflow via floor gutters, the teaching pool has a two-row horizontal flow and the paddling pool vertical inflow. The water is treated in a combined process of flocculation + multi-layer filtration with adsorptive carbon + chlorination.