Spa Bad Elster
Bad Elster, Germany
Behnisch & Partner

A 19th-century spa comes up to date with a series of colorful glass pavilions

© Martin Schodder

For more photos click on 'photos & drawings' above. To see the people and products behind this project click on 'people & products.'

By Claudine Weber-Hof

In 1994 the district of Saxony decided to renovate the landmark buildings of this 1894 spa and give new life to the derelict inner courtyard. The spa hired the Stuttgart architectural firm of Behnisch & Partners to give its historic buildings a face-lift—renovating everything from subterranean steam pipes to old wall surfaces—and to add new facilities. Instead of imitating the old architecture, the new elements are mostly glass and steel and are clearly modern: A bathhouse, an information hut, and a treatment pavilion. The architects also attached glazed passageways and galleries onto the spa's historic walls. The result is a playful "bathscape" with a colorful bathhouse as the youthful new heart of the expansive complex.

Visitors enter the spa from the west, through Albert Hall, a grand space that sets the stylistic tone for the complex. Built in 1910, it is elaborately tiled with fish and shell motifs. Together, the old buildings form a great court with two-story wings running perpendicular to the main facade.

The bathhouse, the largest structure in the courtyard, contains three small splash pools connected by a water gate to two 66-foot outdoor pools. The building's double-skin construction has 3.3 feet of airspace between its twin layers of glass, so it acts as a thermal buffer between outdoors and in. The roof contains an ingenious climate-control system with an outer layer of clear insulating glass mounted on a white steel grid and glass beams. On top, the roof's gently sloping surface keeps rainwater on the move. Below this, suspended from the main steel frame, glass louvers can open or close, depending on the weather. The outer surface of the louvers is printed with a 45 percent white frit to reduce the impact of the sun, but the underside is livelier: Berlin artist Erich Wiesner coated these surfaces in blue, green, yellow, and red, making the uneven fields of color look like clouds floating across the sky.

See the August 2001 issue of Architectural Record for full coverage of this project.

Formal name of building:
Spa Bad Elster

Location:
Bad Elster, Germany

Gross square footage:
187,000 sq ft

Total construction cost:
$43 million

Architect's firm:
Behnisch & Partner
www.behnisch.com