TJ Spartak gymnasium and swimming pool

The swimming club of the Spartak Jihlava Gymnastic Union was founded in 1955. From the very beginning, the swimming organiser and coach Oldřich Háj became an important figure, and he soon initiated the construction of the indoor swimming pool too. He succeeded in pushing through the plan, and in 1960, the construction of a gymnasium building with a swimming pool for TJ Spartak commenced next to the Jihlava football stadium. The grand opening of the completed new building took place on 29 October 1965. The building provided Jihlava residents with the first indoor swimming pool in the city, the tenth in the whole country. With its equipment, this architecturally well-designed building enabled the development of the Jihlava swimming school tradition at a professional level.

Territorially, the building is on the outskirts of the Sídliště I. housing estate, which was established in the 1950s. The project was created at the end of the 1950s under the direction of the architect Jan Řídký from Stavoprojekt in Jihlava, who also designed other buildings in the housing estate. The architectural style of the sports building, however, stands out completely. Unlike the surrounding houses, it is already part of the "new" architecture of the 1960s, referring to international modernism, but also to the interwar avant-garde and the Baťa functionalist tradition. The façade concept and the clear modulation of the main structures evoke the form of the Jihlava Sokol House built in the 1930s according to the design by the architect Bohuslav Fuchs.

The building consists of two basic structures, clearly defined by the façade concept. The building is divided into a higher main wing with sports halls, extending into the vertical axis of the frontage, and a service section along the longitudinal axis. The main entrance to the building is accentuated by a distinctive entrance avant-corps, which was originally divided by the vertical rows of windows illuminating the main staircase inside. A horizontal white grid of strip windows with red clinker facing ran along the façade of the three-storey service section. The entire rear wing of the main part is occupied by a two-storey hall with a 25-metre swimming pool and a smaller training pool. There was also a diving board for competitors and a spectator gallery upstairs. A sauna was located in the basement, with a gymnasium and sports hall on the upper floor. The reinforced concrete monolithic skeleton allowed the pool hall to be structurally illuminated by an all-glass wall in the rear façade, flanked by a pair of external staircases. In 1996, the first of a series of renovations and repairs took place. On the upper floor, a bowling alley and a restaurant were added. Unfortunately, subsequent additions, replacement of windows and thermal insulation of the façade caused the building to lose some of the original structural purity, elegantly rhythmic division of the shutters, as well as the characteristic red and white colour scheme.

JL