The Baths of Bastion

CTU in Prague - Faculty of Architecture

Project idea

The remains of baroque fortification of Prague, bastions, are today waiting for their new functions and for us to inhabit and use the spaces they occupy again.

My idea is to breathe a new life into one of the bastions, make it a city baths, a spa, and help Prague face it's shortage of public swimming pools.

I like to think that, in the bastion, long forgotten baths were waiting to be rediscovered. And so my job was not to build new ones, but to only find and uncover the long forgotten ones.

It should be a place for people to take a deep breath, relax and think, meditate. I find a lot of calmness in swimming and in simply being in water. The whole stay in spa you are accompanied by nature- water and greenery, which the bastion is covered in, but that stays visible from the inside.

To the visitor I aimed the baths to feel ancient, old, calm... I wanted to make him or her feel closer to nature and as if they were in a centuries old structure. Almost as if they could connect to the wisdom of our ancestors.

Project description

Spa is divided into parts- the saunas, the open spaces of 50m and 25m swimming pools and the more spacialy intimate relax area with various smaller pools. The visitors park their vehicles in a parking lot under the adjacent 'Park Marie Terezie.'

Technical information

The main materials used are concrete and wood. Together with greenery, taht also accumulates rain water, they should feel natural to make you feel as if you weren't in the very heart of a busy city, but on a retreat in wilderness.