City Baths Berlin-Mitte

Until 1930, there was only one old bathhouse with tub baths in the center of Berlin. The flat-roofed building of the municipal baths was located in a densely populated area on the edge of today's Zillepark. The project was created by the head of the construction office, Carlo Jelkmann. Connected to the mass of the swimming pool is a more prosaic, tiered facade lined with yellow clinker bricks. The building is divided into three parts: in the street tract, there are tub and shower baths, medical baths, Russian-Roman baths, massage rooms, and relaxation areas, which are always divided into sections for men and women, with the exception of the ground-floor hall leading through a covered promenade to the second construction section. Due to the sloping building line, inner courtyards with conical floor plans were created. In the second construction section, blocks of changing rooms with skylights are formed. Their roof is used on the third floor as a terrace for sunbathing. Finally, the path leads through the cleansing areas into the swimming hall with the first fifty-meter pool in Europe. The interior of the swimming hall was designed by Heinrich Tessenow. From a height of three meters, he divided the walls into a grid of 2.60m in width and 8m in height, which he filled with three-part casement windows. The similarly glazed roof creates a strong spatial impression. To prevent water condensation at the ceiling, the double window was supplemented by a heated intermediate space with a height of 90 cm. Between 1986 and 1993, the baths underwent an extensive renovation.