Zeidler Miklós: Sporting Spaces - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2000)
generation grew up which won three consecutive water- polo championships against particularly tough opponents. The team was directed by the trainer of Hungary’s world-championship winning side. The Császár-Komjádi Swimming Fool (No. 8 Árpád fejedelem útja, district II) Acting as the master-trainer of Hungary’s awesome national team, Béla Komjádi can be credited with assisting at the birth of the first golden age of Hungary’s water-polo. His name was given to the new pool, also known as “Komi”, built in 1975 next-door to the Császár (nicknamed “Csaszi”), a swimming pool much cherished by Budapest’s residents. Though frequently renovated in the course of its history, the Császár Baths has always retained its status as the country’s number-one water-polo centre. At the time the Olympic gold and silver winning water-polo teams of France and Belgium both suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Hungarian side in 1925, additional terraces had to be set up next to the “crumbling, damp and mossy benches” by the linden trees leaning over the pool to seat a crowd of three thousand. A 50 by 25 metre pool was made for the European championship held the following year, and by the summer of 1927 two concrete grandstands had been built to plans made by the two most prolific architects of sports facilities, Alfréd Hajós and Aladár Mattyók. Thus the “Csaszi” became the “fairy castle of Budapest’s water sports”. Fifty years passed before the next significant development had been made. With the open-air pool of “Csaszi” and the covered, 25-metre, pool of the old baths left intact, a new swimming pool with its characteristic-looking arched roof, designed by Zoltán Kelecsényi and his associates, was built next to the existing facilities. The backbone of the building is a reinforced concrete grill together with the ferro-concrete edifice with its rigid-steel structure mounted on the grill and supporting an aluminium roof, which has a 40-metre span. The ground floor of the building contains a foyer, a refreshment room, a restaurant as well as a gymnasi14
