Zeidler Miklós: Sporting Spaces - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)

The Sports Swimming Fool on the island with its designer Alfréd Hajós in the foreground (1930)

their first chance to explore the new swimming pool. It was on that day that the following report was written:

“Bright and friendly colours greet you from all directions in this airy and spacious hall. [...] The sight opening up in the swimming pool is unforgettable in its beauty and breathtaking in its magnificence. Far below

glitters the bluish-green water in the pool. [_]Visibility

is excellent from everywhere, and what strikes you before all else is the fact that space was not an issue for the designers. [...] There is a distance of 14 metres between the floor and the ceiling [...]; it need not be pointed out what this means in terms of the size, the spaciousness of the hall. High above, beneath the cream-coloured ceiling, five huge arches span the hall supporting its roof. [...]”

It was not only the contemporary reporter who was overawed by the Sports Swimming Pool on Margaret Island; the construction did not fail to impress the confraternity of European architects either. L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, the most prestigious professional journal of modern architecture, gave a detailed description of Hajós’s work, which is indeed one of the finest spec22