Covered Spa Ostrava

The spa is located in the catchment area of central Ostrava. It is oriented with a glass wall of the indoor pool towards the midday and afternoon sun and connects to a sufficiently large area designated for exercise and sunbathing. The planted greenery, mostly arranged around the perimeter of the spa grounds, creates an optical and acoustic barrier against traffic on Sokolská street.
The main operation of the spa — the indoor pool — is significantly evident in both the floor plan and volumetric arrangement. The pool measures 25×12.5 m with two diving boards at heights of 1 and 3 m. The floor around the pool and the resting steps are heated. The long wall glazed with thermal insulating glass simplifies both the appearance and maintenance compared to the previously used double and specially tempered glazing. The sloping design reduces the span of the roof structure and allows for better sunlight access to the hall. The air conditioning utilizes the roof space, where warm air is pumped in and extracted under the resting steps. The ceiling soffit consists of a grid of impregnated pine boards, which, along with acoustic plaster on the walls, reduces noise in the spa.
The pool hall is visually connected to the café on one side and to the heating room and lifeguard's room on the other. The changing rooms are divided by gender and located on two levels. An audience area was not requested.
In a separate wing, there are cleansing, steam, and hot air baths. Visitor services (café, barber, hairdresser, and pedicure) are connected to the hall via a staircase. The technical facilities of the spa are located in the basement.
The structure of the building is influenced by subsidence, which is reflected in more frequent dilations and unfortunately partially in some dimensions. The reinforced concrete skeleton with infill lightweight masonry is complemented by a sloped steel wall and trusses.
The architecture of the indoor spa wants to fully acknowledge the mission of the building in its physiognomy, deriving from a semantically differentiated division of volumes, with a primary emphasis on the formation of central spaces, while supporting the utility and cleanliness of spa operations in other respects. The restrained color of the facades reflects the possibilities of the dusty environment of Ostrava. In the interior, the main emphasis is placed on the space of the enclosed hall, which is visually connected to the café. Its color scheme harmonizes with light tones, water surfaces, and the natural wood of the ceiling, accented by the colored artistic decoration. The author of the ceramic mosaic and the pavement design is academic painter Ota Schindler.

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Several notes on the Indoor Spa
The new indoor spa in Ostrava belongs to the few successful realizations of public buildings in recent years. The simple, practical, and artistically valuable architectural solution of the exterior and interior of the swimming hall are qualities that we rarely find so far, either in details or in the entirety of extensive construction in the Ostrava region. The overall architectural concept of the public spa expands the currently limited series of sports and recreational buildings of this kind, which have emerged in the last fifteen years.
The author managed to further develop a specific, but previously anticipated architectural form, following the closest contact between the enclosed hall and the exterior, through mutual optical and functional blending, thus overcoming the confused studies and implementations of recent years, whose functional solutions are schematically reflected in symmetrically arranged volumes and entirely foreign forms. Examples include the spas in Boskovice, in Prague on Juliska from 1957-58, and others, or unilaterally subordinating the entire solution to an apriorily chosen new form (the proposal for covered spas in České Budějovice 1963).
The spa building is suitably situated near the gymnasium and the constructed sports areas, contributing to the efficient concentration of sports and recreational facilities near the city center. The justified effort for the longest and direct sunlight results in the placement of the enclosed hall so that the glazed wall faces the street. Despite the significant distance, this solution seems one-sided, especially given that summer operations assume a direct connection between the hall and the outdoor pool, as well as the external sports and recreational areas with park landscaping, which thus find themselves in close proximity to a busy thoroughfare, with which they are fully spatially related.
It is debatable whether the proposed acoustic and optical barrier created by tall greenery will meet the expected purpose and ensure the necessary degree of intimate atmosphere in both the external and internal spa space. The clear and economical layout into two nearly independent parts, which are orthogonally joined, is fully emphasized in the composition of the masses. The lapidary architectural solution of the hall with a sloping ceiling and a glazed, slanted front wall, which serves as the main artistic accent, derives from the consistent orientation of the interior space towards the exterior. The sober and tasteful architecture of the hall is sensitively resolved even in the details of the hanging terrace and entrance staircases. The high and completely glazed sloped wall, vertically divided by steel frames and a slanted ceiling soffit clad in wooden slats, not only allows for optimal lighting and spaciousness of the interior but also particularly favorably reduces the impression of depth and enclosure of the space by solid walls to the minimum extent. An open question remains as to how this slant of the front wall will withstand the heavily polluted air in Ostrava.
The artistic decoration is less convincing, similar to that in the Žilina hall, additionally filling the walls of the swimming pool's interior. From many other buildings, it is evident that a simple addition of a building with an added artistic piece must be replaced by a higher artistic quality of the architecture, which will become a new stimulus for finding unconventional forms in the interaction between the artwork and the building. The interiors in the side wing are less successfully resolved; for instance, the waiting area of the cleansing baths and the café remain at the level of minimal possibilities and completely ordinary interior furnishings.
The architecture of the low side wing appears differently and even disharmoniously in connection with the striking and unambiguous form of the swimming hall, as it does not stand out in design quality or character from the majority of our buildings. This discrepancy in the quality and character of the primary masses is the main reason why the spa in Ostrava does not yet achieve a more significant architectural value in its entirety.