Water & Wellness Flintholm

The design plays a trick on the eye, giving the impression of water flowing down the facade. Inside, the multi-story building houses swimming pools, a spa and a gym.

On the approach to Water & Wellness, it appears as a simple box sat atop a hillock – and it looks as if water flows down its façade. But looks can be deceiving. The box is pentagonal, and its six floors include two that are subterranean, buried into the hill’s soft side. The façade doesn’t gleam with trickling water either, but its cladding’s pixelated pattern looks like it.

Water & Wellness is Frederiksberg’s first new swimming facility since 1934, and after the success of a similar one in Randers, is the second its architects have created.

It’s also part of a bigger vision for a new urban leisure space in one of Copenhagen’s further reaches. Leading from Water & Wellness, a bike and footbridge crosses the Metro tracks to access curved paths that swoop between varied play areas and innovative landscaping towards KU.BE.

Within Water & Wellness’s 5,500m2 are a spa, gym and swim zones – the latter comprising eight pools across the two underground floors.

Flooded with light thanks to panoramic windows cut into the ground around them, these are lined in steel rather than tiles, and host traditional lane swimming and bubble, splash and fun zones. Underwater LED lights transform them with colour, and two curling waterslides offer a slightly wilder ride.