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

Budapest Spartacus

(No. 142 Üllői út, district X)

The axis of this new sports facility are a football field, an athletics field and an archery range, with the Spartacus Sports Swimming Pool, Adám Sylvester’s spectacular work built in 1983, standing next to the sports hall. The dominant feature of the building is the light, diagonally arranged, broken-lined suspended roof. The harmony of the structure, airy and robust at one and the same time, is achieved through the employment of deliberate contrasts. The vertical character and white walls of the front belonging to the auxiliary facilities (dressing and bathrooms, terraces) make an exciting contrast to the brown-stained timber elements of the metal structure with its broken slopes. The building radiates elegance and dynamism, while the peculiar shape and suggested mass of the roof veritably stretches out the structure. There is a 33.33 by 21 metre, deck- level pool for competitions and a tiny learners’ pool inside the hall, while a runners’ corridor is attached to the building.

The magnificent swimming pool of Spartacus

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