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SX

SWIMMING POOL

Santo Tirso, Porto, Portugal

2014

author  NOARQ - José Carlos Nunes de Oliveira  program private swimming pool  collaborators arch. Hugo Araujo  contractors Cardoso do Monte, Sociedade de empreitadas SA com António Ramalho, Sociedade de construções desportivas SA photography  Arménio Teixeira

technical

drawings

description

“(…) All of this, doesn't happen in the sea, nor in the sun," the swimmer Palomar thinks, "but inside my head (…) I am swimming in my mind (…).  His strokes have become weary and hesitant. In the disintegrating world, the thing he would like to save is the most fragile: that sea-bridge between his eyes and the sinking sun (…)

I. Calvino, Palomar​

The reflection of light on water! How is a cliché designed?
The water is more important than the recipient. Swimming is more important than the desire to have a swimming pool. The pool doesn’t exist without the sun, and the water without light, will never stop being the reflection of the lawn’s shadow. I retain: swimming; water; sun.
I suggested, first of all, setting apart the pool from the house – to allow it to establish its own space in relation with the tree, the wall, the line of the slumps. We avoided the stone edges.
We wanted a puddle of water in the grass. We wanted the sky’s reflex in the lawn’s floor, interrupted by a rock.


We almost designed a puddle and a rock. The almost is the empty line that preserves the contact between the water and the lawn. The rock is granite. This place is made of granite.
In here, the water has geometry – it’s not possible to imitate chance. A rectangle of water and a rectangle of stone make a square.

 

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