Olympic swimming center

Project description:

This project includes the extension of the existing swimming pool ‘Wezenberg’ in Antwerp and was part of ‘Road 2 Rio’. The new top-class sports pool was built to prepare athletes for the Olympic Games in 2016. Given the objective, a very tight timing of one year was set for the construction of the entire pool. The idea was to build a training pool next to the current pool. In this way, top athletes can prepare for Rio in complete rest.

The new pool is 50 x 16 metres with several portholes in the tub. These will allow the user to set up cameras in order to optimise the athletes’ swimming performance. Cameras will also be set up within the pool area above, beside and behind the starting blocks. In this way, the coaches can create a 3D image of the the dive, with an eye to sharpening the swimming times. Now that the project has been completed, the athletes have a top location to shine in various swimming disciplines.

The new building has a very high compactness, which results in a K-level of 14. In addition to the high-quality building envelope, economically and ecologically justified techniques were also chosen. For the air treatment, we opted for air groups that recover heat from the humid air. In this way, the evaporation heat from the bath is recovered very efficiently.

Hydro-anthracite filters were installed in the technical room in the basement. As a result, the new pool uses much less water than the existing one. The pool itself was equipped with asymmetrical lighting fixtures. This allowed each fixture to be placed above the quay, making maintenance much easier.