Auland Thermen, Stopfenreuth (AT)

We have invented a water world that “brings us down”, that lets our gaze wander and makes our breath wide. No armouring is necessary; the building provides protection: through clarity and orientation, through borders and spatial arrangement, through the warmth and sensuality of construction and shell. The programme became a “Spa in the wetlands” as the client’s target. The alluvial forest is spread out over the entire area, light islands (forest glades) are “cleared” in which the buildings are located.
The central project idea is located in the Anger – a marketplace as the place of community, culture and trade. It is encircled in three rings: Inside the arcade, which is followed by the level of the functional and infrastructure rooms in the central area. The docked outer areas of the bathing and lodging form the outer ring. The wreath of buildings around the Anger takes over the connection and distribution for all functions and individual areas. All shapes are organically flowing, round or lenticular. Natural forms and designs permeate each other, flow into one another and blur the boundaries. The design evolves as a result of paths, squares and spaces.
The “climax” in the literal sense is marked by the car tower. It lifts the visitors above the narrow and dense alluvial forest, opens the view into the vast, quiet (March)land and the Danube valley. The arcade surrounds the Anger as a two-storey distribution and strolling zone and as a filter between the private and the public, between the urban marketplace and nature experience of the wetlands. In the south-east, the arcade is the prelude to the entrance and right-of-way zone of the core areas of the entire complex: for fun bath, restaurant café, relaxation bath, wellness area, hotel and camp.