architect: Büro Wehberg
location: Wolfsburg, Germany
year: 2005
The floating spa, symbol of an independent isle to arrive, retreat and become one with the element of water. The reduced style of interior design as well as the clear, axial alignment of the building exemplify the focus on the elemental phenomena. The space’s prevailing mood is influenced by light wood and charcoal-colored fibrous concrete. Panorama windows to both fronts create a light-flooded atmosphere with immediate access to the surrounding element water and offer a view to the city, the power plant and the sun deck.
Since early June 2005, a swimming pool has been afloat in the port basin of the Autostadt between the parking lot and power plant of the VW factory premises. Connected only via a small pier to the spa area and thus the solid ground, the floating pool is a fresh water outdoor pool offering a clean body of water within the harbor allowing users to experience swimming in the canal and the post basin. It follows the tradition of the so-called ”bathing ships”, of which fifteen private Spree swimming pools existed in Berlin alone at the turn of the last century. These swimming pools either consisted of a partitioned section of water within the Spree river or contained pools filled with fresh water.
architect: Büro Wehberg
location: port basin of the VW Autostadt, Wolfsburg, Germany
client: Autostadt GmbH
size area: 30.000 sqm
pontoon: 800 sqm
net area: 130 sqm
gross volume: 577 mc
completion: June 2005
photos: Wonge Bergmann, Helge Mundt
Influenced by his artistic home, Max Wehberg showed already in his first terms at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg by professor L. Rosenbusch a highly traditional approach to design in his work. These demands as longevity are expressed by Wehberg´s pure style, reduced calculations of proportion and his love for material and the craft. The whole scale of his work belongs to an aesthetic strand that links the Cistercian monasteries, the Shaker and Japanese ideas of austerity and simplicity. After several years as a freelancer, he founded the office wehberg 1999 in Hamburg, that works on classical design disciplines as product development or interior design as well as in the fields of architecture, stage design and the Fine Arts.
