Beautiful facade finish for imposing swimming complex 

On the site of the old 50-meter pool on Zwembadlaan in Aalst, Belgium, a new swimming complex has been built. Aquatopia has no fewer than three sports pools and a water paradise for the whole family. Despite its imposing size, the building looks more like a pavilion in the green pool park. Thanks to the beautiful facade finish of insulated QuadCore Karrier facade panels combined with Kingspan Insulated Panels' innovative Dri-Design cassettes as an aesthetic shell.

To realize the new swimming complex, much of the existing shell and even the old pool were reused. "This was possible by clever phasing," says the project architect in charge, Sander Laheij of Slangen+Koenis Architects. "In the first phase, a new 50-meter pool and a 25×35-meter top sports pool with diving towers were built. During construction, people simply continued to swim in the old 50-meter pool. Then, in the second phase, the existing building was stripped down to the concrete shell and the recreational pool and a target group pool were built in the old pool. The idea of reusing the existing pool largely determined the layout of the new swimming complex."

Floating superstructure

The swimming complex is located in a park on the Molenbeek River and designed as a pavilion. "The entire plinth is executed transparently for maximum interaction between inside and outside, while the superstructure is designed as a single volume and thus seems to float above the transparent plinth," explains Sander. "Furthermore, the building is characterized by two straight facades and a facade in a concave and convex form. The first embraces the public part of the park, the convex facade in turn follows the curvature of the landscape and guides the connection between two green zones." 

QuadCore core

To achieve the intended sustainability ambitions, the swimming complex has been given a highly insulating building envelope. "We deliberately chose QuadCore Karrier facade panels from Kingspan because of the high Rc value of 8, but also to be able to play with the appearance in combination with the Dri-Design cassettes," says Sander. Patrick Theelen of Kingspan adds: "Insulation and energy efficiency are important issues in swimming pools and sports buildings. The QuadCore Karrier façade panels are unique in this, because the core insulates over 10% better than comparable PIR panels. So in this application, you can insulate much more efficiently with minimal thickness, allowing you to keep building slim."

Relief and shading

The swimming complex thus owes its wind and water tightness to the insulated QuadCore Karrier façade panels. "On the two straight facades, an aesthetic shell of Dri-Design cassettes in different widths, heights, depths and colors was applied to this. It creates a lot of relief and shading, resulting in a very blended and friendly looking facade," Sander believes. For the 'curved' facades, the cassettes have been applied in the same line to emphasize the concave and convex shape. Incidentally, this shape is an optical illusion, because the cassettes are segmented onto the sandwich panels via an auxiliary construction, but you can't see it because of the scale. 

Creative freedom

Slangen+Koenis Architects works a lot with Kingspan for these types of projects. "The freedom in panels and cassettes is enormous. We can play with the width, height and depth. And also with different degrees of maturity of the coatings. We could never have achieved this look with any other product," notes Sander. Patrick also praises the creative freedom and says: "The beauty of the QuadCore Karrier façade panels in combination with the Dri-Design cassettes is that it offers a lot of variation within one modular system. Moreover, the ideal thing about this concept is that with the QuadCore Karrier façade panels you can quickly make a building wind- and watertight and then at a later stage mount the aesthetic shell directly on the element, i.e. without a complicated rear construction."

Finally, the panels and cassettes also meet the requirements for a circular utility building. "They are listed on the NMD MIA list, making them eligible for, among other things, the investment deduction for circular utility buildings," Patrick explains. "In addition, we recently started offering a return guarantee program for a responsible end-of-life strategy. So, in short, Kingspan Insulated Panels are also a sustainable and circular choice."