Thinking about the architecture of water parks, we usually do not have the best associations - low-quality pavilions, plastic slides in mottled colors and not very aesthetically pleasing landscaping around the facilities come to mind first and foremost. But do aquaparks always have to be architectural "nightmares"? This thesis seems to be contradicted by Szczecin's Water Factory, designed by the DreamWorlds team working under TKHolding. Yesterday we learned that the new aquatic recreation center has been nominated for a World Architecture Festival 2024 architecture award in the "Sports" category. How does the awarded aquapark look like?
The Water Factory is not the first attraction of its kind located on May 1 Avenue in Szczecin. Even before the war, there was a bathing area there known as Schwimmbad Gruene Wiese. Already after World War II, in 1973, the Gontynka was launched there, a place visited by crowds of Szczecinians during the summer months. Gontynka offered visitors three swimming pools, a small catering pavilion and a water cascade steeped in legend. With the advent of the new millennium, the long history of the bathing area at May 1 came to an end. The gontynka had not been renovated for years, and did not meet sanitary conditions or safety standards.
The Water Factory in Szczecin
© Water Factory
The idea for the revitalization came as soon as the communist-era bathing facility was closed. The city decided then that an aquapark would be built at the site. However, construction could not get off the ground. As the local website wSzczecinie.pl reports, the perpetual delays became a symbol of the local authorities' helplessness, and even had their political consequences.
The case contributed to the dismissal of Deputy Mayor Dariusz Wąs, who was responsible for the city's development strategy, including the creation of the aquapark, the portal reads.
Sixteen years after the closure of Gontynka, the results of a competition organized by the Szczecin branch of SARP for the design of a new water park in Szczecin have been announced. The winner was the concept prepared by the DreamWorlds team working within the TKHolding office. The Water Factory welcomed its first visitors on June 1 this year.
The Water Factory in Szczecin
© Water Factory
aquapark with an idea
The Water Factoryin Szczecin is a complex consisting of two buildings integrated into a green and blue infrastructure. The first building performs functions related to the main purpose of the aquapark - as expected, there are swimming pools, slides and a saunarium, among others. The second, functioning under the name of Education Center, plays a rather unusual role for a water park - as it is a space with a cultural and didactic function.
Water Factory in Szczecin
© The Water Factory
The architecture of Szczecin's Water Factory is remarkably restrained for an aquapark. The juxtaposition of two horizontal masses with streamlined shapes and sculpturally treated white facades has produced a scenographic effect that evokes modernist architecture. The complex can be viewed from different perspectives - at a height of several meters, a footbridge has been suspended between the buildings that comprise it. According to the words of the project's authors, the crossing, which cuts through the center of the plot, organizes the space of the aquapark, symbolically referring to the role that the Oder River plays in Szczecin.
A walk by the water
Like many areas falling into disrepair, the area of the former Gontynka bathing area has also been adapted by people living in the surrounding neighborhoods. Despite the fact that the future of the site was a foregone conclusion due to the guidelines of the Local Development Plan, the former bathing area had been used as a wild park before the first concrete plans for the Water Factory appeared. The creators of the project decided to take this phenomenon into account in their concept - as the area of the new water park is semi-open. A footbridge has been made available for local residents to walk over the site, creating a small linear park within the area. This solution allowed the architecture of the Water Factory to be organically integrated into the surroundings.
As designers, we noticed that the facility, to be built on the site of a former swimming pool, is surrounded on three sides by high-rise residential neighborhoods. Most of the residents used the space as a wild park - a green path, especially since there was a beautiful avenue of lime trees running through the middle of the site. We decided that instead of creating one merged building volume, we would break it into two wings by running a pedestrian footbridge through its center. In this way, instead of taking this space away from the residents of the surrounding blocks, we created an inclusive public space," the project's authors reported.
The Water Factory in Szczecin
© Water Factory
not just slides
The Szczecin Water Factory is a multifunctional place. We don't just mean the various attractions offered by the building with its pool area. It turns out that the Water Factory has also found a place intended for exhibition purposes. The Education Center, as this is the name of the facility in question, is an important place on the map of the complex - educational exhibitions dedicated to water are installed here. The Education Center consists of six thematic blocks: Space, Climate, Ocean, Human, Water Civilization, Hydroengineering, and in each of them visitors will find manual and multimedia exhibitions. Water issues are presented here through the prism of physics, mathematics, geography, biology, chemistry, humanism and history. Interactive exhibits and educators, who are constantly present in the exhibition spaces, talk about water in Szczecin's aquapark. Visitors also have the opportunity to listen to speeches by well-known Polish youtubers popularizing scientific topics - these include Huyen Pham, Kasia Gandor and Dawid Mysliwiec. The Education Center also offers visitors an auditorium, which is located inside a structure suspended above the ground, which is a model of a water molecule.
The Water Factory in Szczecin
© Water Factory
a range of possibilities
The Water Factory is described as a mixed-use space - in addition to swimming pools and an educational center, there is also a fitness area, a multimedia entertainment center, a climbing wall or an amphitheater for open-air events. In winter, the Water Factory will open an ice rink to visitors. By then it will be known whether Szczecin's Water Park will receive an honorable mention in the World Architecture Festival 2024. The awards gala is scheduled to take place in early November this year in Singapore.
