Hasta La Ideas

Residents plunging into the swimming pool of this Stockholm house may feel like they’re in an aquarium.

The surface of the swimming pool is located on the deck of the upper ground level, but a large window in its concrete side faces visitors arriving on the floor below.

Designed by Swedish architects DAPstockholm, the three-storey Villa Midgård and its swimming pool are set into the inclining landscape.

Slate wraps the elevations of the house at the lower level, while Corten steel clads the facades of the upper two storeys.

A central crank splits the building into two halves, with different rooms on each side.

One half of the roof is covered in grass and the other half is occupied by a terrace.

Other houses with interesting swimming pools include a remote Australian lodge and a jumbled house in India.

Photography is by Åke E:son Lindman.

Here’s some more information from DAPstockholm:

A multi‐faceted house with a lot of attitude

When the client met with DAPstockholm they wished for a solid, secluded house with a maintenance‐free facade, a sense of ceiling height and a master bedroom with the benefit of morning sun.

They also wished for a solution where they could open up larger windows toward the scenery and have a sheltered space where they could sit and listen to the pouring rain.

This resulted in a multi‐faceted house where the shape and direction of the different volumes are based on various factors such as the terrain, the light conditions, the views and the privacy. The volumes give the house seven different facades.

This and the dramatic nature of the sloping site provide the house with a unique character. Cut‐ outs in the mountain give space for the outdoor seating areas. In the south‐east direction, outside the SPA, one of these creates a significant border between the arranged and the rampant garden.

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The second floor is suspended above the entrance floor to shadow and protect the yard. Here the infinity pool, made out of dark concrete, make you think of a deep forest lake adding to qualities of a wilderness where the water runs over the pool edge.

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The facade of the souterrain is made out of slate and the stair from the carport out of limestone. Grass covers the roof of the tallest volume and the roof terrace where it is themed with spruce. The house interior also exhibit materials that are close to nature such as walnut, ceramic granite and marble.

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“By using living materials the house will become more characteristic with age” says Calle Smedshammar, partner Architect at DAPstockholm.

Project: Villa Midgård
Architect: DAPstockholm
Area: approx 300 sqm
Number of rooms: Four bedrooms, three bathrooms, one toilet, common area, kitchen, living room, cinema, spa, guest room, wine cellar, storage and a tech room divided onto three floors.
Construction and Facade: Cast‐in‐place concrete structure and Corten steel with elements of charcoaled beech wood
Location: Stockholm
Client: Private
Status: Completed 2011
Landscape: In collaboration with Nod Combine
Paving for entrance and parking: White pigmented concrete
Carport: Cast‐in‐place concrete structure blasted into the side of the mountain and covered in vegetation

Continuing our special feature about swimming pools, here’s a timber pool house with limestone walls beside a farmhouse in Surrey, England. See a movie of the building on Dezeen Screen »

The pool-side building by UK studio H2 Architecture is named Roundalls and features an untreated timber ceiling and a polished concrete slab floor.

The two tall stone walls separate the main room and adjoining shower from a study to the east and a garage to the west.

The sunken swimming pool is situated between the glass-fronted pool house and the farmhouse, surrounded by a decked terrace and flowerbeds.

See more stories about swimming pools here.

Photography is by Logan MacDougall Pope.

Pope also photographed another small waterside building featured on Dezeen – see our earlier story here about a lakeside retreat in Sri Lanka made using a stray shipping container.

Here’s a more detailed description from H2 Architecture:

Roundles

The new pool house nestles down into a saddle of land to the south of the old farmhouse, and replaces a group of single- storey agricultural buildings.

The building has a splayed footprint that responds to the boundaries of the garden with the garage on one side and a glazed study on the other, with a large open planned multi-use space in between. The three rooms are separated by two fin, walls with long span glulam beams spanning across the larger central space.

A complete wall of glass sliding doors allow; this space to be opened up onto the pool terrace with a view over the swimming pool and down through the garden, the farmhouse visible to one side.

The fin walls are constructed from a local limestone, also evident at the base of the old farmhouse; cedar cladding is used for the garage elements and the shower room enclosure; cedar is also used for the windows to the study; dark grey framed aluminum windows are used elsewhere; and the building has a glass roof with a slatted timber canopy to the front protecting to the pool terrace.

Internally 1m x 1m polished concrete slabs are used for the floors. The roof structure of long span glulam beams and shorter span timber joists is left exposed and untreated.

At the rear of the large space is a wall of cupboards with large sliding doors that mimic the main glass doors out to the pool. Above these cupboards is a long slot window that draws light in from the south and allows views up into the field above the building.

The study area is designed as a lightweight ‘lean too’ structure supported to one side by the fin wall and to the other on a slender cedar posts.

Double glazed window panes are fitted between the posts and the openings step up in relationship to the ground levels around the building. The room has a 270 degree panorama to the surroundings landscape. New planting between the pool and the driveway shelters the pool area and mediates between the old and new structures.

The roof has been designed to accept planting, and the proposal is to cut ‘sods’ from the adjoining field and thereby extend the planting within these fields across the roof of the new structure, blurring the distinction between the built form and the surrounding landscape.

The property previously relied on an oil fired water for all its heating. Consideration was given to a number of alternative heating systems, including bio- mass, ground source and micro chp.

An air source heat pump was chosen and this unit provides heat for the swimming pool and the pool house.

The pool extends out from the building drawing your view down through the garden. A cedar deck surrounds the pool and a low dry stone wall faces the end of the pool where the ground level is lower.

A sinuous path links the pool area back to the terrace of the old farmhouse and this has been relaid to match the new building.

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Pool on the slope by Jean-Baptiste Bouvet	House on Paros Island by React Architects	Streckhof Reloaded by Franz Architekten

Architect Jean-Baptiste Bouvet has completed a hillside swimming pool that steps down to a terrace overlooking the scenic French landscape.

Rectangular openings create framed views through the structure, which has four descending levels.

A ramp connecting each level leads back up to the clients house.

The pool occupies the second level down, as does a drinking fountain.

On the third level down is a planted garden, while two trees grow in the terrace at the lowest level.

Other swimming pools featured on Dezeen include the London Aquatics Centre by Zaha Hadid and a conceptual floating pool that would filter river water through its walls – see all our stories about swimming pools here.

Here are a few words from Bouvet:

Pool on the slope – Jean Bapiste Bouvet Architecture

This project consist to create a pool in a small space and extremely steep.

The aim was to treat the topography through the project, which plays on the duality of two major space.

The basin, which is interiorized and that of the lower terrace, which opens onto the landscape.

A ramp allows connecting these two spaces. A series of framings are set up through the sequence of the project.

Location: Le Paradou  (13) – FRANCE
Program: Construction of a swimming pool and courtyard garden
Client: Private

Budget: € 35 000 HT
Surface: 150 m2
Date: 2007/2011

See also:

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House on Paros Island by React Architects	House in Andros by KLab architects	Villa Paya-Paya by Aboday architects

Family and PlayLab have designed a floating swimming pool for New York that would filter river water through its walls. 

Called + Pool, the cross-shaped baths could be divided into four separate compartments with a lane-swimming pool, children’s area, sports pool and lounge.

The designers have launched a campaign through crowd-funding platform Kickstarter to build a full-scale prototype of one arm.

The information below is from the architects:

EVERYTHING IS BETTER WITH A POOL

+ Pool is the collaborative initiative of design studios Family and PlayLab to build a floating pool for everyone in the rivers of New York City.

The project was launched with the ambition to improve the use of the city’s natural resources by providing a clean and safe way for the public to swim in New York’s waters.

As both a public amenity and an ecological prototype, + Pool is a small but exciting precedent for environmental urbanism in the 21st Century.

NYC + POOL

+ Pool is for you, for your friend, for your mom, for your dad, for your girlfriend, for your boyfriend, for your kids, for your boss, for your bartender, for your tamale guy, for that dude over there, for New York City, for everyone.

An offshore reflection of the city intersection, + Pool both exemplifies the dense, busy character of New York City and offers an island retreat from it.

HISTORY + POOL

Floating pools have paralleled the development of New York City dating back to the early 19th Century. When the city’s elite used lower Manhattan as a resort in the 1800s floating spas were located just off the Battery. After the Civil War the huge influx of immigrants required bathhouses in the Hudson and East Rivers as many were without proper bathing facilities in their homes. In the early 1900s improved plumbing infrastructure and increasing water quality concerns closed the last of the river-borne pools, relocating aquatic leisure activities to more sanitized and inland sites.

In 1972, the Clean Water Act set forth the goal of making every body of water in the country safe for recreation, and in 2007 the Floating Pool Lady – a reclaimed barge now located in the Bronx – brought back the first semblance of New York’s floating pool culture in almost a Century.

Today, as the appreciation for our city’s natural resources becomes increasingly crucial, a permanent floating pool in the river will help restore the water culture so integral to New York City.

EVERYONE + POOL

+ Pool should be enjoyed by everyone, at all times, which is why it’s designed as four pools in one: Children’s Pool, Sports Pool, Lap Pool and Lounge Pool. Each pool can be used independently to cater to all types of swimmers, combined to form an Olympic-length lap pool, or opened completely into a 9,000 square foot pool for play.

WATER + POOL

The most important aspect of + Pool’s design is that it filters river water through the pool’s walls – like a giant strainer dropped into the river.

The concentric layers of filtration materials that make up the sides of the pool are designed to remove bacteria, contaminants and odours, leaving only safe and swimmable water that meets city, state and federal standards of quality.

PARK + POOL

Its universally recognizable shape and unusual offshore siting immediately position + Pool as a iconic piece of public infrastructure.

Whether as a compliment to a thriving park or catalyst for a growing one, the pool can serve as a destination for weekend visitors, an island haven for busy locals, and a symbol for the surrounding neighborhood.

TEAM + POOL

After the launch of + Pool in the summer of 2010, Family and PlayLab began meeting with waterfront organizations, engineers, urban planners, environmental experts, public and private developers and community organizations to build a team to push the project forward. Likeminded institutions like The Metropolitan Waterfront Association, NYC Swim and the Department of Parks and Recreation have all been integral in shaping both the design and process of the pool itself.

The + Pool team has been working with renowned engineering firm Arup New York to study the filtration, structural, mechanical and energy systems of the pool as well as the water quality conditions and regulations necessary for the project. The team recently completed a preliminary engineering feasibility report in preparation for the material and methods testing phase.

NEXT + POOL

Following the completion of the preliminary engineering report done in collaboration with Arup, the + Pool team is now moving into the phase of material testing to assess and determine the best filtration membranes and methods to provide clean and safe riverwater for the public to swim in.

Family and PlayLab launched a Kickstarter online fundrasing campaign in June of 2011 with the ultimate goal of generating enough support to prototype the filtration system by building a full-scale working mockup of the one section of + Pool.

Research, design, testing and development will continue through the year in conjunction with permitting, approvals and building partnerships with community, municipal, commercial and environmental organizations.

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Synchronicity Island by Jakub Szczęsny	Urban Beach by O + A	Floating gardens by Anne Holtrop

I’ve come across Carlo’s work in a few different places as of late. He frames a lot of his shots below the horizon, or amidst some kind of thick fog. It gives them a really distinctive feel, like you don’t know where on earth he could have shot it. No? Something like that though. more