Spa architecture

Spa architecture (German: Kurarchitektur) is the name given to buildings that provide facilities for relaxation, recuperation and health treatment in spas.

The great period of public bathing culture in the Middle Ages ended with the Thirty Years' War.

If a spa town could not keep pace with this development and carry out the costly building measures needed, it resorted to simpler immersion bathing facilities (the Armenbäder and Bauernbäder).

A lime avenue framed by a pavilion ran from the valley up to the palace-like building, forming a central axis.

Aachen developed into the leading fashionable spa on the continent and maintained this position until the French occupation period at the end of the 18th century.

As the centre of society life, the building is a direct forerunner of this type of spa house that became widespread during the 19th century.

In the spa towns there was a preponderance of buildings for education, communication and leisure to cater for the great number of guests.

Specialised buildings were erected: the spa house (Kurhaus), the drinking hall (Trinkhalle) and thermal baths.

In addition there were landscape gardens, hotels and villas as well as theatres, museums, cable cars and funiculars and observation towers.

The spa buildings no longer catered for all functions – such as lounges, baths, and lodgings – under one roofl as had been usual during the baroque era.

The oldest, surviving spa house is the Kurhaus of Baden-Baden, built in 1822-24 under the grand duke's architect, Friedrich Weinbrenner.

The largest enclosed foyer (Wandelhalle) in Europe (3,240 square metres) with its adjoining spring hall (Brunnenhalle) in the Bavarian state spa town of Bad Kissingen forms a stylistic transition from the 19th to 20th centuries.

One of the earliest representatives of the New Objectivity is the New Drinking Hall in Bad Wildbad, which was designed in 1933 by Reinhold Schuler, an architect in the Württemberg Ministry of Finance, and Otto Kuhn, president of the Construction Department of the Treasury.