Champagne Bath
Typology Recreational
Location Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Site Area 2,925 sqm [31,485 sq ft]
Location Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Site Area 2,925 sqm [31,485 sq ft]
Building Area 1,890 sqm [20,345 sq ft]
Date April 2022
Date April 2022
Champagne Bath, which opened its doors in 1924, was created amidst a turn-of-the-century effort by the City of Ottawa to provide its growing working class public amenities promoting cleanliness, fitness, and social mixing. Despite its charm and heritage, the original building contains a pool that is inaccessible and short of regulation length for lane swimming, with ancillary spaces that are crowded and dark.
The addition aims to add a regulation-length lane swimming pool while leaving the existing pool as undisturbed as possible. To access the new pool complex, visitors will enter through York Street into a new lobby, accessing new change rooms by a ramp. The new space is held up by a mass timber structure, using the 1990s extension onto the original building as a passageway between the parallel pools. The new light-filled extension is clad in timber and glass, with a raised concrete foundation matching the height of the existing building.
