Municipal swimming pool

The city of Znojmo sought a long time for a site to build a swimming pool. The original plan near Dobšice close to the Dyje River could not be realized due to the disconnection of the municipality from Znojmo. After reviewing other locations, the city decided on the area under the Loucký Monastery, in the space vacated by the army in 1994. Today, there is a park on the site of concrete surfaces, asphalt, storage shelters, and military barracks, which includes the city's swimming pool.
The basic concept respects the dominant position of the monastery, whose current appearance is the result of a large reconstruction in the second half of the 17th century. It assumes that the rehabilitation of the space under the monastery will be the first step on the path to its restoration and new use.
Recreational and relaxation areas are located in the northern part of the complex and, together with the gardens on the terrace and the earthen rampart, form an open park space in front of the main eastern facade of the monastery. Part of the relaxation areas includes a restaurant with a bowling alley and outdoor terraces oriented towards both the swimming pool and the monastery, as it is anticipated that it will be utilized year-round. The pools are located at the southern boundary of the property and are separated from Melkusova Street by simple service buildings for management, changing rooms, sanitation facilities, refreshments, and technical equipment for the pools. After the swimming pool operation ends, the recreational areas will be opened to the public in the mode of a monastery garden. The western part of the area is designed as an orchard where parking occurs on a grassy meadow. The parking lot is anticipated to also serve the activities of the monastery in the future.
The outdoor pools are made of stainless steel, the service buildings have a supporting frame made of glued wooden trusses, and the external cladding of the sandwich walls is made of composite laminates. The restaurant is covered with a shallow gable roof made of cement-bonded fiberboard, and the surrounding walls are clad in larch wood and natural stone. The external walking surfaces of the promenades and terraces are made of machine-troweled concrete.
We consistently referred to the swimming pool in connection with the construction, and not to an aquapark. Intentionally, we sought more the romance of capricious summer than the screeching of crowds in whirlpools and water slides. Hence the simplicity and unobtrusiveness of the building objects and the significant attention to landscaping.
The plan for the city swimming pool was sharply criticized from the beginning by members of the Beautification Society in Znojmo, who sought to prevent the transformation of the devastated area of the military complex into a city park with a swimming pool by all means. With the help of an ecological legal service, they managed to delay the entire construction by more than a year. The biggest media dispute was waged over the surrounding wall of the car park on Melkusova Street. This wall was in very poor technical condition, its historical origin was never convincingly documented, and it was not protected as a monument.