French architecture studio Urbane Kultur has refurbished and extended this dome-shaped swimming pool just outdoors Strasbourg, which is 1 of nearly 200 developed about France in the 1970s .
Photograph by Communauté Urbaine de Strasbourg
The Tournesol swimming pool was constructed in 1975 in Lingolsheim, just outside Strasbourg, but suffered from bad insulation and a cramped layout, with shifting rooms about its perimeter. To rectify this, Strasbourg studio Urbane Kultur was commissioned to refurbish the developing and include an extension at the side for new shifting rooms and offices, freeing up space inside for two new swimming pools.
“The style has remarkable spatial qualities and organic light, but it was barely insulated, also tiny, and not wheelchair-pleasant,” the architects informed Dezeen.
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, 183 of the dome-shaped swimming pools had been constructed in France. The design and style, by architect Bernard Schoeller, is one particular of a variety commissioned by the French government to inspire much more men and women to swim, following the country’s poor performance in the sport in the 1968 Olympics.
Schoeller named the buildings Tournesol – or sunflower in English – and created them with a self-supporting steel-framed dome that allows for a massive column-free of charge space within. They also characteristic two curved sliding panels so that one particular side of the building can be opened up in summertime, inspired by the way sunflowers angle themselves towards the sun.
Related story: Refurbished Paris swimming pool functions blue bleachers and an outside sunbathing deck
Some of the pools have given that been refurbished, a number of have been heritage-protected, and a lot more than forty have been closed, irreparably damaged, or demolished.
“The city of Strasbourg desired to protect this 20th-century architectural heritage, rather than change it with a new creating,” stated the architects. “A great deal of folks learned to swim in Tournesol swimming pools and have excellent memories of them.”
Conserve for the steel frame, the concrete foundations, and the authentic 25-metre pool, the total dome was rebuilt in purchase to improve its insulation. The exterior was then clad in black rubber and the interior was covered in white stretched canvas.
At the sides, in which changing rooms and the entrance utilised to be, two new pools have been added. A single has a water jet and a tidal swimming zone, and the other offers a paddling pool for infants.
A curved part of glazing was also added at the side, the place the preceding entrance was, offering a view of a new landscaped courtyard outside.
Photograph by Urbane Kultur
Beside the dome, a boomerang-shaped extension has been extra, with a discreet corridor linking the two buildings. It replaces a vehicle park and two box-shaped buildings that housed an gear area and a lifeguards’ room.
Photograph by Urbane Kultur
“The dome made any extension tough,” stated architects. “How do you increase the capability of this kind of an object with out altering its picture? This is why we made the extension as an independent developing that wraps about the dome, barely touching it.”
Photograph by Urbane Kultur
The extension provides one,190 square metres of new area, doubling the dimension of the complicated. It houses offices and rooms for technical gear in 1 wing, and showers and altering rooms in the other wing, and was clad in steel panels to give subtle reflections of the surroundings.
Photograph by Urbane Kultur
Urbane Kultur is now working on the refurbishment of yet another Tounesol swimming pool in Ferette, 154 kilometres south of Strasbourg, close to the Swiss border.
Photograph by Urbane Kultur
“It truly is unfortunate that a lot of Tournesol swimming pools have currently been demolished,” explained the architects. “We hope we can convince cities to refurbish them alternatively. We feel of them as part of our well-known modern day history.”
Other swimming pools featured not too long ago on Dezeen consist of a single raised on a large cone-shaped concrete plinth for a Croatian house and a layout for a glass-bottomed pool suspended between two apartment blocks in London.
The swimming pool prior to refurbishment. Photograph by Urbane Kultur
Photography is by Jean Baptiste Dorner, unless of course otherwise stated.
Venture credits:
Style crew: Philippe Dahan, Dominique Cornaert, Amaury Sigwarth, Piotr Jansky
Landscape design: Bruno Kubler
Construction: Structurest
Cost estimator: Les Economistes
Fluids engineer: SNC Lavalin
Acoustics: Euro Sound Undertaking
Floor plan 
Model of the swimming pool extension. Photograph by Patrick Christmann Dezeen
