Downtown swimming strengthens downtown | arkitektnytt.no
Free for indoor swimming pools are often very high both for procurement and operation, and the money is not exactly loose in Norwegian municipalities when it comes to such procurements. The most expensive plant to date is under construction in the middle of Oslo. Tøyenbadet will be large and will have an indoor bath with fire pool, a large outdoor bathing facility, water slide inside and out, diving tower inside and out, and cafeteria. Tøyenbadet will probably cost more than NOK 2 billion.
For this one could get floating baths in all the country’s port cities for the same cost as a Tøyenbad. This is a floating pool with a universal design and high design and which can be open all year round, and of course unformed universally. The shortage of pools in Norway is large, and many municipalities spend large summers on school children’s buses to and from swimming pools, often in other municipalities that cannot be claimed to be sustainable.
Urban development in Haugesund and San Sebastian is not the same, but the common denominator is that you want to activate the center and create city life. In Norway, we no longer want to locate swimming pools so that they become car-based. The policy adopted by both the Solberg government and the new Hurdal platform is that the city center must be developed, something on which, among other things, Haugesund and Arendal’s municipal plans build.
For downtown development in all the cities of the country it is worth noting that something positive happens when something new comes to the center with a sixty number of visitors. Life on the shore is where we want to be, and the question Norwegian spatial planners and politicians should ask themselves is whether floating pools are not part of the solution for better downtown facilities, revitalization and not least that it will be more fun to swim in all kinds of weather in 27.-28 . degrees.
About half of Norwegian fifth-graders unable to swim at least 200 meters consecutively. Norwegian children are the worst at swimming in the whole of the Nordic region, something that “stands in the way” in the country with the world’s second longest coastline. In Iceland and Sweden, for example, more than 90 per cent of children are able to swim, while the proportion is over 70 per cent in Denmark and Finland. Construction of a floating pool will strengthen the center of the port cities and contribute to increased swimming skills. Molde, Kristiansand, Trondheim and not least the swimming town Ålesund is an example of a burden that must plan a floating pool in the center.
Geir Rognlien Elgvin, project director NSW Arkitektur