The Frankfurt artists Dirk Paschke and Daniel Milohnić built the “Werksschwimmbad” in 2001 as part of the arts project “Contemporary Art and Criticism”. Since then, the pool has been emblematic of structural change in the Ruhr region. The bathers become part of the artwork.
With their “social sculpture”, the two artists thus gave a completely new function to a place that until the 1990s was characterised exclusively by hard work conducted in great noise and heat.