Bad Lobenstein (DE)

Inhabited milieu's challenges

The town of Bad Lobenstein is looking for strong courageous ideas and spatial concepts for places of experience as well as accommodation and health architecture in order to define its character as a spa town of the 21st century and to become one of the central destinations in European health tourism in the future.
The traditional spa town of Bad Lobenstein - about three hours each by car from Munich and Berlin - is located in the midst of a unique landscape with steep slopes and forests in the Thuringian Slate Mountains. The project area in a valley location includes the historic spa park, the existing ARDESIA thermal baths with parking spaces, the town pond as well as the Lemnitz River floodplain and fallow land.
With a total length of over 70 km, the Saale Cascade in Thuringia, which borders the town, is the largest contiguous water reservoir in Europe. The Thuringian Sea meanders through the Saale valley in countless meanders, lined with numerous recreational and holiday resorts.
The spa town wants to be a pioneer for the integrated development of urban and health planning. The Europan competition task is to identify a new clinic location, to expand the thermal spa landscape and to diversify the accommodation offers. Innovative and pioneering design approaches must be developed for resource cycles, a connecting open space concept between nature and urban space and supplementary offers in the area of wellness, well-being and nature tourism.
In a trend-setting manner for spas and health resorts in the rural areas of Europe, urban and landscape deve- lopment lines for integrated health, tourism and urban planning are to be developed for this location.

Questions to competitors

How can Bad Lobenstein as a tourism destination use and combine architecture and nature to offer experiential spaces and thus gain more recognition? How can the needs of the population, travellers and nature be balanced in the spaces that are both living environments and destinations? Which key spatial reference points must be further developed? Bad Lobenstein sees an outstanding development path in the continuation of a local tradition – the consistent use of bogs and mud as a healing agent.
What role do natural resource cycles in the surrounding landscape play in this process? How can tourism and landscape development be made sustainable and how can targeted climate adaptation measures be integrated? A conceptual and spatial examination of the resource cycles around the themes of mud and thermal water is required.
The location and compatibility of the facilities should be examined in the project site and the study site; i.e., in addition to the city-owned areas of the spa facilities, other private areas can also potentially be integrated into the design in justified cases. Central questions for the processing of the site are: What strategies and programmes are needed for a multifunctional health location with decentralised offerings and a central spa loca- tion? How can existing offerings (e.g., mud treatments) be combined with therapeutic approaches in outdoor spaces (e.g., forest bathing, Kneipp pools, water playgrounds, outdoor sports parkour)? Where and how can the resources of mud, water and slate be experienced and deployed?