ENERGY BECOMES ARCHITECTURE

The school complex in Verl, which has been expanding since 1963, is being gradually reorganized, renovated, and expanded. The indoor swimming pool plays a special role in this process. It is used for school and club sports as well as for public swimming, thereby opening the educational facility more fully to the city.

The new building is oriented around the existing building lines and, together with the comprehensive school’s expansion, frames the schoolyard as the new center of the campus. At the same time, the pool serves as a separate entrance on Friedhofsweg. Students and clubs access it via the schoolyard, while operational activities are organized independently of this.

This clear separation continues inside the building. The glass-enclosed foyer combines the entrance, ticket office, and lounge area, and offers a view of the swimming hall as soon as visitors enter. Short walkways lead to the locker rooms and on to the pool areas.

At the center is the 25-meter sports pool with five lanes. Adjacent to it is a multipurpose pool with stairs and a height-adjustable movable floor. Both pools are made of stainless steel. A transparent partition wall allows for different activities to take place simultaneously without compromising the open feel of the swimming hall.

Large expanses of glass bring natural light into the interior, while exposed concrete defines key wall surfaces. Color-accented lighting fixtures and a glass block wall provide individual points of contrast.

The interior layout is also evident from the outside: While the foyer opens generously onto the forecourt, the swimming hall responds to the requirements for lighting and privacy with more strategically placed openings.

However, the truly unique feature of the Verl Indoor Swimming Pool lies in its building envelope. The solid facade surfaces are equipped with building-integrated photovoltaics. In other words, the solar modules were not retrofitted onto a finished facade, but rather replace its exterior cladding while simultaneously providing weather protection, enhancing the building’s design, and generating electricity.

Frameless, green-tinted CIGS thin-film modules give the building different shades of color depending on the light. Their technical function remains recognizable but becomes a natural part of the architecture.

The BIPV facade has a capacity of 88 kWp, with an additional 80 kWp generated on the roof. Together, the systems are expected to generate more than 100 MWh of electricity annually and, according to calculations, cover approximately 41 percent of the indoor swimming pool’s projected electricity demand.