New Heidbergbad swimming pool in Braunschweig

Five starting blocks and four lanes

published in sb magazine 3/2022

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.

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.