Swimming Pool: The Latest Architecture and News

There are few things that fascinate us more than the sea. Its contemplation arouses a sense of peace, while its colors, textures, movements and amplitude provide a scientifically proven effect of relaxation in our nervous system. Above all, it makes us realize how small we are in the universe. It is not by chance that a house facing the sea is a dream of consumption for many, let alone with a pool right in front of it. Infinity pools play with this feeling of infinite sea and sky. Through a well-elaborated set of levels and plans, they create an optical illusion that leaves everyone speechless, making pool water appear as if merged with the horizon, overflowing at one or more edges. But before you plan your photo on Instagram with a glass of sparkling wine in your hand, let's take a look at how these pools are built.

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OOPEAA (Office for Peripheral Architecture) has won an invited competition for the design of the Allas Sea Pool Family in Helsinki, Finland. Constructed on floating platforms, and designed as a modular, flexible, adjustable system, the Allas Sea Pool Family is intended to be a new global typology for coastal sites, where building on land is not feasible.

The invited competition asked entrants to submit proposals which responded to varying environmental and seasonal conditions, with OOPEAA ultimately chosen for their “strong concept that places the floating spa in a central location in the city.”

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There is something about water that continually captures our imagination. Tranquil, dramatic, or ever-changing, the architecture of public baths and swimming pools can enhance the inherent qualities of water. Bathhouses were traditionally meeting-spaces where social differences bled away into skin and steam. Even in contemporary architectural projects, spaces for swimming and bathing often feel like a separate world, therapeutic and intimate.

Below are 12 projects that display stunning spaces for communal bathing and swimming.

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A new infinity pool offering unparalleled views of New York City is to be constructed atop KPF’s upcoming Brooklyn Point tower. At 680 feet above grade – nearly 100 feet higher than the iconic infinity pool at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore – when completed the pool will become the “highest residential infinity pool in the Western Hemisphere."

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Spas, swimming pools, and saunas are spaces to which we turn in search of positive experiences, especially healing and sanitation. What characterizes all of these spaces is a requirement to wear little clothing--or even none at all--meaning that these spaces have very different expectations regarding nudity, privacy, and the human body when compared to other forms of architecture. From the point of view of design, nudity requires specific spatial conditions, forcing architects to think carefully about details such as the opacity of materials and the dimensions of space. With this in mind, this week we present a selection of the 15 best images of healing spaces, captured by renowned photographers such as Kevin Scott, Clément Guillaume, and Marcello Mariana.

One of architecture’s most delightful anomalies is the diversity of solutions generated by any given site. From hypothetical university projects by architecture students to professional international design competition entries, the differing perspectives, stances, and experiences brought to rest on one site by several design teams can wield a bounty of contrasting ideas.

Recently, we reported on Nestinbox, a proposal by Swedish architecture firm Manofactory to attach a series of simple, functional houses to a cliff face in Stockholm, addressing the demands of increased populations and land prices in cities across the world. Now, the cliffs of Stockholm have been the subject of an entirely different, though just as evocative concept by Swedish firm UMA. Rather than private housing, UMA proposes the Stockholm Infinity Pool, a public pool 1km along the Sodermalm cliffs of Sweden’s capital.

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A post shared by Lisa Forbus (@blackforestmom67) on Apr 9, 2017 at 6:28am PDT

From the soaring infinity pool on top of Marina Bay Sands to a glass-bottomed pool hovering over a mountainous Italian landscape, it’s safe to say death-defying swimming elements have emerged as the most high-adrenaline trend in luxury accommodation.

Now, a new pool at Houston’s Market Square Tower is upping the ante even further with a transparent plexiglass wading pool that projects out 10 feet past the end of the building – and 500 feet above the busy street below.