Václav Kolátor

The Prague architect Václav Kolátor entered the history of Czech Architecture as a key figure in the theory and practice of buildings for swimming sports and recreation. In the interwar period, as a swimmer himself and a member of the Czech Swimming Club, he was concerned with swimming pool designs and writing about them.

After finishing his studies at the Czech Technical University in 1925, he cooperated with his schoolmate Vladimír Frýda. They took part in a wide range of architecture design competitions, especially for school buildings, none of which however, were carried out. In 1929, Kolátor found employment at the Building Department of the City of Prague and, in the same year, started to work on the key project of his life – the swimming stadium of the Czech Swimming Club below the Barrandov Terraces (finished in 1930). This most emblematic interwar swimming campus ensured Kolátor's fame and started a whole succession of roughly dozens of other swimming around the country (e.g. Stará Paka, Frýdštejn, České Budějovice, Volyně, Česká Třebová, Litomyšl, Nové Město nad Metují).

From his youth, Václav Kolátor's political leanings were to the left, and he belonged to the circle of designers around the Prague Scientific-Functionalist revue Stavba. Despite his sympathy towards the “strict” Functionalist trend, which favoured the practical aspects of architecture over the aesthetic ones, his inclination towards the emotive impression of Functionalism is clear in his designs for swimming sports. Kolátor complemented the austere Constructivist prisms of the utility buildings at the swimming baths with contrasting elegant and aesthetic curves of the slides or diving towers.

He is the author of highly-erudite literature concerning the building of spas and swimming pools, which proves his knowledge of foreign projects. His publication Lázně: Stavba lázní, koupališť a plováren, jejich úprava a zařízení, which he wrote in cooperation with Alexandr Hofbauer in 1935, is considered to be his most famous work. At the legendary exhibition “Za novou architekturu” (1940), Kolátor (as an expert on the given theme) was entrusted with the section for physical education and sports recreation.

After the Second World War, Václav Kolátor, as a member of the Communist party, was active in the Department of Development of the Central National Committee of the City of Prague, and was a prolific contributor to the official periodical of architecture – Architektura ČSR.

AŠ
 

1929–1930
Swimming stadium of the Czech Swimming Club
Barrandovská 1, Prague 5

1930
Reconstruction of the Girls Grammar School
Vladislavova 47–48, Prague 1

1934–1935
Swimming pool Eva (with Franz Wimmer and Endre Szönyi)
Piešťany

1934–1935
Villa Fischer (with Vladimír Frýda and Alois Vavrouš)
Valdštejnská 216, Jilemnice

1935
Swimming pool
Sliač (Slovakia)

1937–1938
Swimming pool
Česká Třebová

1939–1941
Swimming pool
Volyně

1951
Swimming pool
Chrudim