#Industry News
A Bigger Splash: The public outdoor pools making waves
Outdoor swimming is experiencing a watery renaissance, with a raft of noteworthy projects allowing bathers to do it the natural way, even in the most urban of contexts. Come on in. The water’s great.
David Hockney’s iconic 1967 painting A Bigger Splash, with its straight-lined, turquoise swimming pool, once represented the acme of Californian glamour and high modernism: flanking the pool is a sharp-edged house, while nature (two token palm trees) is sidelined. Today’s equivalent might be the high-end hotel’s mirror-smooth infinity pool.
But the tide is turning against artificial-looking pools filled with synthetically sterilised water in favour of natural pools and ponds, a vogue kickstarted in the 1980s by forward-thinking, eco-friendly designers. ‘Chemical-free’, ‘non-mechanical’, ‘unpolished’ — these are the buzzwords on architects’ lips today. Precedents for the trend include Australia’s ocean pools (enclosed areas on rocks with seawater naturally invading their borders) and zero-entry pools simulating beaches.
One pioneering natural pool is Copenhagen’s harbourside, public swimming baths designed in 2003 by architects JDS, which ticked another box currently exciting architects: the desire to create democratic pools recalling the lidos of old. Alfonso Reina’s 2013 pool in Esporles in Majorca, Spain continues this tradition — it’s part of a municipal sports centre annexed to a children’s nursery and café. It might not tap into the natural pool trend but does nod to nature: the building’s rough-textured, phyllite-clad exterior echoes views of mountains, while dancing beams of reflected light from the pool penetrates it via openings in its façade.
More linked still to its natural surroundings is Basalt Architects’ 2010 pool in the fishing village of Hofsós, Iceland. Separated from views of the sea by the slimmest border, the pool creates the illusion for swimmers that they’re ocean-bound.
And Herzog & De Meuron’s pond like Natural Swimming Pool on the bank of the river Wiese — created for the Swiss municipality of Riehen and modelled on Basel’s traditional wooden Rhine-side baths the so-called Badis also embraces nature. Indeed, its design was influenced by the growing rejection since the 80s of conventional pools with mechanical and chemical water treatment systems in favour of ones with biological filtration methods: the water is cleaned organically by aquatic plants and layers of gravel and soil.
A similarly eco ethos underpins King’s Cross Pond Club — a much talked-about public pool that is part of the 27-hectare redevelopment at King’s Cross, London. Billing itself as ‘the UK’s first public, man-made, naturally purified bathing pond’ and designed by Ooze Architects and artist Marjetica Potrc, this is cleaned by submerged plants and wetland flora. Since it is chemical-free, visitor numbers are restricted, but perhaps this is a reasonable price to pay for not emerging from a pool, eyes stinging from chlorine.
Meanwhile, if a Kickstarter campaign raises enough funds, this will be joined by Studio Octopi’s idea for an open-air, floating swimming pool on the River Thames. The project’s co-founder Chris Romer-Lee, who was inspired by seeing swimmers in Lake Zurich, believes, ‘Indoor pools have had their day. There’s definitely a demand for outdoor swimming, which feels similar to going into the sea.’
No longer dipping their toes in the natural pools trend, architects are now immersing themselves in it, plunging, as it were, into the deep end.
