A Bigger Splash

Basalt Architects’ design in Hofsós, Iceland exemplifies the current vogue for outdoor pools that strive to blend with their natural surroundings — in this case the Atlantic Ocean and nearby island of Drangey; photo: Gudmundur Benediktsson

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.

Alfonso Reina’s sports centre-cum-outdoor pool in Majorca links with its natural environment through its architecture and hard landscaping

The grey, metallic phyllite cladding the angular building and paving around the pool echo the forms and colours of the mountains in the distance

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.

Above and below: Commissioned by Esporles’ municipal council, the sports centre incorporates a nursery adjoining the pool area. It also houses three multi-purpose rooms, a cafeteria, locker rooms and spacious washrooms

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.

Flanking a high wall, Basalt Architects’ pool in Iceland is sheltered from strong northerly winds. The adjacent, one-storey building was designed to harmonise with the modest scale of the area’s traditional houses; photo: Rafn Sigurbjornsson

The building beside the pool at Hofsós is glass-fronted and so reinforces the project’s connection with its ruggedly natural surroundings; photo: Gudmundur Benediktsson

This link is further emphasised by the use of Icelandic stone as flooring in the building; photo: Gudmundur Benediktsson

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.

Since 1979, Herzog & de Meuron has proposed several unrealised conventional pools for Riehen...

But local residents, say the architects, have long hankered after swimming facilities and so they have finally created a bathing lake, whose organic design reflects the current popularity of natural pools

Accommodating up to 2,000 bathers per day and naturally filtrated by aquatic plants and gravel, the pool in Riehen is bordered by a larchwood-fronted building housing changing facilities and a café; photo: Christoph Junck

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.

King’s Cross Pond Club is in fact an art installation called Of Soil and Water, in place for up to two years in the Lewis Cubitt Park and Square area in King’s Cross

Kings’s Cross Pond Club was designed, say architects Ooze, as ‘the juxtaposition of something natural in an urban environment. It is meant to look unpolished and evolve as the seaons change’

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.

A Bigger Splash

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.