Kultur Pool - User-Driven Development as an Opportunity
Taylan Akkas
Kultur Pool - User-Driven Development as an Opportunity
Taylan Akkas’s master’s thesis presents perspectives on a user-driven development of the decommissioned swimming pool in Alt-Hürth.
After the city drained the water from the pool, promising ideas and project plans followed for the former Alt-Hürth swimming pool, which failed not only because of financial and building-law difficulties. Both the realization of a stock brewery based on the model of a successful conversion of a former swimming pool in Wuppertal, and the most recent project proposal by the current owners, which seems to have no end in sight, to create a rehabilitation center in the swimming pool, are characterized in part by their conceptually linear orientation.
Whether their implementation could have created lasting social added value for Alt-Hürth is something we will never know, because in the future the local residents and the stakeholders gathered around Brabanter Platz are taking responsibility for the former swimming pool into their own hands.
Under the name Kulturpool, a sponsorship body from the fields of culture, education, childcare, and hospitality will come together, aiming not only to initiate the preservation and revival of a historic building, but also to actively enrich cultural life. After the closure of the “Campi Volksbühne” in Cologne, restaurateur Paolo Campi is once again turning his attention to the old swimming pool in Alt-Hürth. This time, it is not purely about realizing a brewery where he wanted to give Hürth residents the opportunity to become shareholders. Rather, he is part of a more multifaceted vision for the swimming pool and will in future operate its gastronomy as a core use, primarily intended to accompany the Kulturpool event program. Kultur Pool will be the publicly visible nucleus of the former swimming pool, creating a platform for cultural and social exchange for residents through a combination of its own events and external rentals.
Project type
Master’s thesis
Design author
Taylan Akkas
Supervisors
Prof. Dr. Florian Kluge
Prof. Willem-Jan Beeren
