The new Schwaketenbad in Constance is reportedly considered the largest sports and family pool on Lake Constance. The location is steeped in history, as the old Schwaketenbad, built on the same site in the 1980s, fell victim to a major fire in 2015. Behnisch Architekten created an extensive bathing landscape of 10,000sqm in a large new building with a sculpturally folded roof. The architects’ goal was to create a building with “natural materiality” that would create references to the adjacent landscape spaces and thus generate “familiarity”. With this in mind, they decided to design the bathing area with tiles from Agrob Buchtal in almost all areas.
Natural colourfulness
Arriving bathers encounter a building that appears pleasantly small-scale despite its considerable size. The unagitated natural colour tones and surfaces are characteristic. In the foyer, the combination of materials is said to be particularly striking: 30x60cm cream-beige floor tiles from the Nova series laid in a wild pattern, with ceiling cladding made of spruce and kanth wood and some exposed concrete walls. The first subtle colour accent is provided by red privacy walls that lead into the adjacent changing room area, which is also fitted with cream-beige floor tiles from the Nova series.
After passing through the changing rooms and showers, bathers enter a passageway with mosaic tiles from the Fresh series on the floors and walls. The mosaics, shimmering in shades of blue, are designed to lend this area a “certain mystique”. There are several reasons why visitors feel at home immediately after arriving in the bathing hall, Agrob Buchtal says. Firstly, they find themselves in the same natural world of colours and materials that they already know from the entrance area.
Secondly, from here they have a view of all the water attractions and, thanks to the large glass façade, also of the outdoor area. And thirdly, they experience the roofscape composed of three folded strips as a fascinating three-dimensional spatial structure under which very different areas are created.
Targeted colour accents with mosaic
Acccording to Agrob Buchtal, the Fresh series attracts the greatest attention in the toddler pool. At the bottom of the pool, circles of different mosaic mixtures are interspersed, some of which extend over the edge of the pool into the surround. The pool and its immediate surroundings can thus be experienced as a homogeneous play and bathing area. The pool and the surrounding area are separated only by the shallow Wiesbaden Pool Head System, where the outflowing water produces a gentle murmur reminiscent of crashing waves through a specially shaped channel.
A “harmonious, soft colour world” is created in the pool hall with the white-blue swimming pool tiles of the Chroma Pool series in combination with 2800sqm of unglazed sand-white, 5x5cm floor tiles from the PLURAL series. The small format not only reliably fulfils the necessary slip resistance class R10/B, but also facilitates the aesthetic design of connections to other building components (e.g. drains, supports, gutters) or drainage surfaces with slopes. These tiles characterise almost all floor areas of the bathing landscape – the pool surrounds as well as the catering area of the bathing hall and the steam bath.
The Fresh series, a mosaic mix of coral red-mix, sets specific accents in the benches that separate the pool areas and also stand out in the steam bath, which is a stone cube at the edge of the bathing hall. Thanks to the seating steps and walls in this mosaic mix, the interior of the steam bath presents itself as a glowing red crystal where visitors can warm up in the cool water after their bath, Agrob Buchtal says.
The company’s products have helped to create what it describes as: “A bathing landscape that will still be an eye-catcher in many years to come”.
