Open-air Hillside Public Pool

architect Franc Cacak
project Open Air Public Pool, Radeče, Slovenia
written by Maruša Zorec

 

When revisiting the pool in Radeče, I was afraid of the loss of yet another fragment of our modern architecture and expected a miserable scene of an abandoned pool... Several years ago, the public pool on the hill, far from the town, had seemed hopelessly doomed to lose its original form. But the pool remained almost the same as in the first photographs, and locals say it is filled with ecstatic bathers in summer

 

Radeče

 

The creation of the open-air public pool in Radeče is a part of the story of the founding and postwar development of the Radeče Paper Mill. Before WWII, the mill was owned by the Viennese Ferdinand Piatnik, who used it to produce the paper for his famous playing cards. The director of the mill lived near the factory, and since it was one kilometer away from the village, he set up a tennis court, planted rare trees and embellished the factory area by turning it into a kind of a park. His activity brought something cosmopolitan to the small village on the Sava.