Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), in collaboration with Entasis Arkitekter, has released new images of Karlatornet, a 230-meter tower project in Gothenburg, Sweden. Selected by jury in 2014, the tower is scheduled for completion in 2019, and will be Sweden’s tallest building. The project is part of Lindholmen, a new district being built adjacent to the city’s harbor. The full plan – ten blocks of office, retail, and residential space – is slated for completion in 2021, to coincide with Gothenburg’s 400th anniversary.
Courtesy of Tomorrow
Courtesy of Tomorrow
When announced in 2014, the jury described the intent for the competition as “[to] demonstrate how the skyscraper can be integrated into the structure of the neighborhood,” adding that “the building should be a part of the area’s social and architectural context, not stand as a solitary monolith.” Advancing the goals of the competition, Karlatornet will provide a variety of residential arrangements, including those for singles, couples, and large families, as well as social spaces, such as a roof-top terrace, hotel bar, and points of access to the surrounding street life, shops, and restaurants.
Courtesy of Tomorrow
Courtesy of Tomorrow
The urban plan for the area, being designed by Entasis, was described by the jury in 2014 as “safe and well thought-out” with interstitial spaces “[handling] connections admirably, both north-south and east-west, creating meeting points and spaciousness in a way that encourages outdoor gatherings.”
The Church of St. John Paul II is situated in a residential estate, on a parcel of land set in a green space with access from a street with little traffic. This is a small church destined for use by the residents of the area. What was suggested was a building with a rounded volume, taking into account the recesses in the landscape, with the intention of generating a sculptured piece which illustrates its character as an outstanding edifice.
The massive total volume is broken down into parts when it is transversed. It spreads out under the awning which covers the atrium in the exterior and the bell tower. It has been dealt with as a solid body which has been excavated until reaching the final result. The apertures for light are concentrated in the bases connected to the accesses.
The whole edifice has been built with two materials: a granite base which adjusts itself to the height, together with a covering of limestone which gives it its massive character. The finish of the parapets without coping of any other material contributes to increase the idea of a rounded volume.
In the interior the building has been designed as a singular nave with double height which expands into a lateral nave where the chapel for the tabernacle as well as auxiliary spaces can be found. The choir is found “floating” in the middle of the nave, further forward compared to its traditional placement. In this way a gradual sequential access to the interior has been created which commences in the outdoor pedestrian public space. This continues rom the covered exterior atrium with its awning to the interior glazed atrium, the crevice of light before reaching the base of the choir and the progressive uncovering of the altarpiece while the entire space of the nave is inundated with zenithal light.
Plan
Section
The interior has also been treated in a sculptured manner, fostering the excavated volumes which push the space generating entrances for natural light from three directions connected to the orientation of the sun during the day. It has been attempted that the light sources are hidden from view. An interior level has been established to the base which forms the chapel of the tabernacle, the back of the presbytery and the auxiliary spaces joined together with a latticework made of strips of wood.
The central nave is covered with a series of prestressed concrete beams which form a continuous plane and hide the electrical and other systems. That way a massive compact volume is formed by the lateral closures, the roof beams and the choir platform is supported by and floats over the continuous base. The carpentry of the interior, the benches and the church furniture, unified by the use of “Iroko” wood, provide warmth and an intimate scale in the central nave.
The altarpiece, which is the work of the sculptor Javier Martinez, has been conceived as scenographic, specially worked for the scene which it represents. Special attention has been given to light, the background and the spatial relationships between the figures.
Throughout the course of his career, the forms present in Zvi Hecker‘s work have undergone significant changes – from the rigidly geometric shapes of his early work such as his Ramot Polin housing and Synagogue in the Negev Desert, to his more freeform recent works like the Jewish School he designed in Berlin. Hecker, though, sees all of his works as both consistent with each other and individual, describing himself as “an artist whose profession is architecture.” In this interview from his “City of Ideas” column, Vladimir Belogolovsky speaks with Hecker about his inspirations and the ideas that underpin his career.
Vladimir Belogolovsky:I visited the Heinz-Galinski school here in Berlin where your original idea came from the pattern of sunflower seeds; it was not the first time you used it. Could you talk about your fascination with the sunflower, and why you think it is a good guiding principle for a building?
Zvi Hecker: Well, one can’t qualify it as a blueprint for every building. This one was the first Jewish school built in Berlin after the Holocaust. Coming from Israel, I wondered—what could I bring to the children of Berlin? A flower is a natural present and a sunflower is a common flower in Israel. What began as a sunflower evolved into a series of continuously changing images. Already in the construction stage, it looked to some like a kind of a small city with winding streets and courtyards, not really a building. Later on when the schematic model of the load-bearing walls was made, we were surprised to find out that “pages of an open book” were hidden in our design. We didn’t realize it earlier—in Hebrew, school is Beth-Sefer, which literally means “house of the book.”
VB:So if you wanted to be clever, you could say that you conceived the school as the house of the book from the beginning.
ZH: But if I began with the idea of a book, I would certainly end with the sunflower. [Laughs.] Because it is the transformation from one idea to another that happens in the process of design. No matter which way the process begins, it is the result that counts. One can start with “a” to finish with ”k” or hopefully with “z.”
VB:Going back to the sunflower, you said that it is a good gift to the children of Berlin. But you’ve used the sunflower metaphor in the past as well. So it is a recurring idea in your work. Could you elaborate why?
ZH: You know, during World War II, we were deported to Siberia from Soviet-occupied Polish territory. Then we were sent to Samarkand, in Uzbekistan. There during the afternoon, after the classes at primary school, I sketched the local Uzbek houses. That’s when I became an architect. It was a time of a food shortage and the sunflower was helpful… So the sunflower has a personal meaning for me. And it is also nature’s greatest phenomenon. The formation of its seeds follows the mathematical sequence of the golden section. It provides great nutrition, its vibrant color radiates to great distances… What else could nature do for us?
VB:Speaking about your school project, you said that the “dynamic and organic character of the sunflower resonates with the nature of education.” How so?
ZH: Well, the school was first a sunflower, then a city, then a book… But in a way, it remains a sunflower. And it is not as if Zvi Hecker has built a sunflower, nothing like that, but because the walls, facing the sun, reflect the sunlight deep into the classroom’s interior. The unique nature of the sunflower, not its form, is at work here. The way children assimilate knowledge is reminiscent of the way the sunflower captivates the sun’s rays. Education is the illumination of the mind. And I think that education at this school goes on not only in the classrooms. The architecture of the building is a source of education in itself.
VB:Your school is not just a realization of one unique building. It is consistent with what you have done before and since. It is a work in progress. It is your manifesto in the making, is that right?
ZH: For me, the greatest human invention is bread. You take the flour, yeast, water, salt—nothing special—and you bake the most delightful foodstuff. The same is true for architecture—you mix cement, sand, water—nothing special—and you get a beautiful concrete. You know, Frank Lloyd Wright once said: “Ladies and gentlemen, a brick is worth ten cents, if you give it to me, I will turn it into gold.” It is the magic of transformation—what you make out of what you take. And this alchemical process is a life-long labor, not just for one building.
What seems to be consistent in my work is the absence of free-standing buildings for people to go around in admiration. You know, you can’t go around the Jewish school, there is nothing to see. You have to go inside, even though you will still be outside. My buildings very often tend to interchange into a semblance of a city; its walls shape buildings, squares, and courtyards, providing an enclosure and a sense of security.
VB:Some of your early residential projects are based on a repetition of the same modular, and other projects are freer, based on such imagery as hands and spirals with all spaces being unique. Are these different ideas or are they part of one idea?
ZH: As a student of Alfred Neumann it was natural for me to use modular geometry as a kind of matrix and grammar for the architectural design. But of course it was only the way to make the idea intelligible, not an aim in itself – rather a kind of scaffolding taken off when the building is completed. Later on, images like the palm of a hand, a maple leaf, or a sunflower imposed their own syntax. An organic metaphor runs through many of my designs.
VB:You are perceived as an “artist-architect.” Is that how you see yourself?
ZH: I see myself on both sides of the art spectrum. I regularly exhibit my artwork in art galleries and show my architectural projects in architecture museums. Sometimes I hear people say, “So, you are really an artist.” I suppose it is a compliment, since being an artist seems to be better than just being an architect. [Laughs.] I don’t deny that I am an artist and I answered, ”I am an artist whose profession is architecture.”
VB:Do you intend your buildings to be works of art?
ZH: I believe an artist’s path is toward transcendence. I hope that my designs, when built, will be considered works of art within architecture, but who can predict it? We also don’t know what our children will become but we must provide them with the best possible education. This is what the process of design is all about, broadening the intelligence of our designs.
VB:Would you say you are a signature architect? Is that the intention—to find your distinctive voice and express it artistically?
ZH: Distinctive voice is a very poetic expression; I like it, though I think I am rather looking for a distinctive voice for each of my designs. If one detects a certain coherence in my “oeuvre” it is a natural result of what I stand for; what I believe in, it is not a conscious attempt toward a distinctive diction of mine, but rather a faithfulness to what is manifested in the design.
ZH: Personally, I try to satisfy my common sense and eventually refine the intelligence of my design. But I am not trying to attain a particular expression that would be distinctly mine. It would anyhow be fruitless. I believe that if you cultivate your own garden something will grow out of your seeds. As a young architect, I consciously avoided Le Corbusier’s example, but it was very tempting. Some of my generation fell into this trap. I liked Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture and his arrogant posture. You know, Bruce Goff once told me about Wright’s reaction to one of his latest designs: “Bruce, who are you trying to scare?” And then he added, “but we do scare them sometimes.” [Laughs.]
VB:These are some radical thoughts! What do you mean?
ZH: Well, look at my Spiral Apartment House in Ramat Gan, Israel. It has its illegal twist. One can question, for example, the legality of the changes I made in plans during the construction phase, plans that were approved by the building authority and bought on paper by the people. They wanted to sue me. The construction was stopped repeatedly because of complaints from the neighbors. In order to keep going, it needed the assertion of my personal will and total dedication, by working by myself on the scaffolding. This illegal provocative element is not foreign to art; it is a kind of disruptive agent that upsets the established order.
ZH: Not at all. The so called “radical designs” play egalitarian games and look very commercial. I would gladly consider myself as the architect of the pyramids in Egypt, temples in Greece, or castles in Spain. I am a traditional architect because I try to address the basic traditional needs of the people. If someone sees me as a radical, it is most probably because of the way I interpret those needs in contemporary terms.
VB:Well, being radical is also a tradition—building something that never has been done before, whether pyramids, temples, or castles. Part of architectural tradition is breaking traditions, that’s what you mean. You teach architecture; do you have any particular ways of doing that?
ZH: The architectural tradition is the richest and oldest of all the arts, and is also very well documented, for over 4,000 years now. But at some schools of architecture, teaching begins with so-called modern architecture. I think students would learn more if exposed to the way cities like Rome, Paris, Barcelona, and Krakow were masterfully expanded by nineteenth-century architects. They were the real modern architects!
VB:You’ve said: “Architecture is above all an act of magic . . . due to the fact that it hides more than it reveals. What we look at, what we see, is only a reflected image of what we cannot see: architecture’s soul.” Do you think architecture’s soul is always hidden?
ZH: Architecture’s soul can’t be seen. Like in the plays of Anton Chekhov—we can only guess what the sisters in the Three Sisters feel like, as they are unable to spell it out. That is why these plays are always contemporary; silence is never outdated. The same is true for architecture. The silence of what can’t be seen creates the architectural form and its invisible soul.
VB:Do you ever tell your students what architecture is?
ZH: I don’t know what architecture is; I only know what architecture is not. I have to discover it for myself in each new project. You may find some common threads in my work, though it seems to me that I always start from zero. I believe so. For me, designing a building is like cooking a meal. I try not to reheat the old stuff, but start with ordinary ingredients in hopes of arriving at an extraordinary taste.
I like working with limitations. It is all about overcoming and exploiting difficulties. As a result, some of my buildings look as if they were always there. That’s a very good sign.
Belogolovsky’s column, City of Ideas introduces ArchDaily’s readers to his latest and ongoing conversations with the most innovative architects from around the world. These intimate discussions will be a part of the curator’s upcoming exhibition with the same title to premier at the University of Sydney in June 2016. The City of Ideas exhibition will then travel to venues around the world to explore ever-evolving content and design.
A version of this interview was previously published by uncube. It was shared with ArchDaily by the author, with permission from uncube.
The place It is ground in a new development, with lush vegetation and crossed by tall dunes. The lot allows a dual income through a cul de sac at its narrowest or from the street on the opposite front. The peculiarity is that in both situations the sharp difference in height between the street and the lot becomes difficult access to the house.
The customers order was a house to move into at different times of the year that would have four bedrooms, the master with en-suite bathroom, two for the children with a shared bathroom (with multiple places to sleep as they are often accompanied by friends) and a fourth bedroom for guests with some independence, also with bathroom. The meeting place should be integrated with the kitchen and be as generous as possible. A reservoir for saving different beach items and a semi-covered garage is also required.
His sharp relief, the characteristics of its accessibility, quantity, quality and position of its trees were crucial project issues.
Ground Floor
The house was planned as a compact volume that could be located in the existing forest glade. Since this place matched the highest point of the property, it was decided to solve all the main rooms on that level giving to them an overview and the possibility to extend to the outside through generous expansions.
Following this first decision was proposed to place part of the program (in this case the sector guests) at a lower level for a smaller plant and resolve this function the height difference of the main floor with access to the lot.
Section
The resulting prism has two very distinct façades, facing SE, quite closed with one major breach in the social sector access; the opposite, the NO, large openings, determined with a series of vertical partitions not reach the floor. This resource provides unity to a façade that has different uses, as well as give some privacy to environments and protects the incidence of sunlight directly over the openings.
The functional organization You enter the property from the cul de sac, and that level garage, storage and access to guest sector appears. Going up a level through a concrete staircase you get to the main floor. Once you are inside the area aside of bedrooms and bathrooms and to the opposite side, the staircase that descends to the guest sector so that it is connected to the rest of the house if so required.
Upper Plan
The area of family reunion overlooks both sides of the lot and has an expansion. The master bedroom is at the end of the most intimate area and also has an expansion.
The structural proposal is simple: it is supported by inverted slabs or simple beams, except in one end of the prism which is solved with a major cantilever column to release the access area.
Section
The cover is solved by simply giving a minimum slope to the last slab to rapidly produce runoff of rainwater. H21 concrete was used with the addition of a fluidizing to this mixture with small amount of water, when dried, resulting not very compact and require sealing. The few hollow brick interior walls are plastered and painted, the floor is concrete screed cloths divided by plates of aluminum.
Furniture Except the double bed, armchairs and chairs, the rest of the equipment of this property is resolved in concrete. Even the beds of the secondary bedrooms are resolved perforated cantilever slabs.
Fabiola Morcillo Núñez, an architect from the University of Chile, is 26-years-old and has been formally drawing under the name 1989 for about a year and a half. Her illustration project uses basic tools of architecture to build fictitious and imaginary spaces based on Asian architecture and pop art.
Fabiola is aware of the design benefits of paper and uses its abilities to imagine spaces without any limits.
“Architecture as a discursive tool has helped me a lot in constructing my own form of representation,” says Fabiola who is inspired mostly by Eastern culture. At school she had the opportunity to participate in the Ocho al Cubo (Eight Cubed) workshop, which brought eight of the most important architects of Japan to 8 of the most important architectural schools in Chile. Among the visiting architects were Sou Fujimoto, Sanna, Atelier Bow Wow and Kengo Kuma.
METABOLISM. Image Courtesy of Fabiola Morcillo
There she met and spoke with some of the previously mentioned architects, and was introduced to Asian architecture, a theme that has followed her for the rest of her life. Other themes include the limits of space and their deconstruction through questioning ways of living, building visual layers and the multiplicity of results produced in her work.
This illustration belongs to the study of a bath made for the cassette art for No Problema Tapes "The Void" by the artist Babexo. Image Courtesy of Fabiola Morcillo
“The story that left an impression on me was the concept of Kengo Kuma’s ‘Museum of Hiroshige,’ which is inspired by an illustration by Hiroshige — ‘Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ohashi Bridge and Atake’ — in which the image composition is described as an overlap of a series of layers, “The layers of the land,” says Fabiola. She was influenced by the beautiful interactions between art, history, daily life, and in this case, architecture. This led to her first illustration as 1989.
Later she decided to draw her favorite works and daydream about them creating pop images containing fantasies, objects and impossibilities.
LOCAL. Image Courtesy of Fabiola Morcillo
“I like to take several references, be alert to life itself, be very observant and have a broad sense of understanding of beauty and the tools of creation that are presented throughout the day, for example; the internet, books, movies, the street, travel, personal stories, aesthetic preferences, dreams, philosophy etc.”
LOCAL. Image Courtesy of Fabiola Morcillo
“I’m on an endless quest for history and for my life, trying to unite many concepts and display them in a single image.”
In her recent work she created cover art for a NIET CHRIST album (Cristian Nieto) for the label No Problem Tapes, called “Metabolism”. For this project the concept was devised by both thinking about music and reflecting on her favorite subjects. After this process she made two illustrations of the outside and inside of the building “Nakagin Capsule Tower” by Kisho Kurokawa, trying to show the nostalgia and beauty of the Japanese Metabolism architectural movement.
From China with love. Image Courtesy of Fabiola Morcillo
Fabiola’s meticulous work doesn’t move away from the digital world that she has been immersed in throughout her career. She uses Autocad to make her drawings, bringing technical drawing to the world of illustration.
1989. Image Courtesy of Fabiola Morcillo
Currently the artist is doing projects abroad in Taiwan and local collaborations with illustrator Bito Riveros. You can follow her Fan Page here.
As part of ArchDaily’s coverage of the 2016 Venice Biennale, we are presenting a series of articles written by the curators of the exhibitions and installations on show.
The Architectural Imagination presents twelve new speculative architecture projects designed for specific sites in Detroit but with far-reaching applications for cities around the world.
As the home of the automobile industry, the free-span concrete factory, Motown, and techno, Detroit was once a center of American imagination, not only for the products it made but also for its modern architecture and modern lifestyle, which captivated audiences worldwide.
Today, like many post-industrial cities, it is coping with the effects of a declining population and an urban landscape pockmarked with blight. Nonetheless, having emerged from bankruptcy, there is new excitement in Detroit to imagine the city’s possible futures, both in the downtown core and in its many neighborhoods.
Believing in the potential of architecture to catalyze change, the curators selected visionary American architectural practices to address these futures.
With the help of an eleven-member Detroit advisory board, they also selected four sites for the projects: a lot in Mexicantown, a riverfront post office, parcels along the Dequindre Cut, and the Packard Plant.
The architects worked with Detroit residents to understand neighborhood aspirations before devising the programs and forms exhibited here. The projects not only demonstrate the value and diversity of the architectural imagination but also have the potential to spark the collective imagination, and thus launch new conversations about the importance of architecture in Detroit and cities everywhere.
One. It is a refurbishment work for an especially dear, single woman. The apartment is located where the sun sets in Madrid. The space is interior, configured by three bays of 17 m2.
Two. She is determined about what she wants. Authentic wood pavement, geometrical floors, a tatoo as Beyonce´s and gentrifying environment with all the clichés that it involves.
Three. We decide three things. First, there should not be conventional partitions nor doors. Second, never reaching the ceiling with anything opaque. Third, and most difficult one, getting disoriented in 50 m2.
Diagram
Four. Spatially. Compartimentaticion is made only by furniture disposition or glass partitions. A mirroring volume with 500x221x221 cm. dimensions allows hiding, misleading and amplifying the space.
Five. Materiality. IKEA furniture is packaged into formwork board boxes. The structure of glass partitions is made out of crude steel material, 10.10.1 mm. “U” shaped profiles and 30.15.1 mm tubes. All 166 glass pieces embedded in those air-walls are all the same size, fixed with old black putty glazier. They are 3 mm. thick, which increases transparency and anti-reflection issues that are not achieved with common and thicker laminated glasses.
Plan
Six. Three sixes, Three Facts. At this housing scale is better not to project installations along the ceiling, but getting them through the floor and out on the walls. The encounter between baseboards bouxes and these hydraulic tiles with geometric and coloured patterns has to be mirrored, anyting else just doesn´t make sense. And once again, it is confirmed that a centered column into a space is always desirable and useful.
From the architect. The current wooden house system based on bearing wall calculation hardly fits in with the ‘eel’s bed’ or the elongated housing lots typical of Kyoto, an old capital of Japan. While the width of lots has been segmentalized to provide minimal daylight, ventilation and access over a long period of time, the only option today of opening up the frontage is either steel structure or specialized wooden frame structure.
This project’s tiny site west of the Imperial Palace requires enhancement of spatial connection in terms of both plan and section. We therefore opted for the wood structure: integrated the structural body with partition walls, assigned the stairs that comprise the minimal surface element connecting different floor levels to be the bearing wall, and let the braces be a pair of tension members that traverse the building’s entire frame work from the first to the third floor. As these two braces also serve as columns supporting the beams at the end of each floor slab, their motion within the three dimensional space are reflected to the form of the slab.
Floor Plan
These braces are also meaningful because they are one medium of inviting carpenters to the small-scale housing projects, a trial that is unusual in other similar residential projects. As for the low budget and convenience, most small-scale houses in Japan use locally pre-fabricated timber materials. However, this house’s 3-dimensional shapes and the use of unique braces required the craftmanship of Japanese carpenters. The architects are making an effort to merge traditional values of craftmanship and contemporary advantages of industrial technology here.
Furthermore, this project’s main focus lies on the concept to integrate public and private space and furthermore 3-dimensional gradation of them within the house. Due to the elongated housing lot, most houses in this old urban fabric may feel isolated even though these lots are suitable for the privacy respect. One way to solve this issue is to preserve the maximum transparency of the interior space and structure to connect public area in the front and the private courtyard in the back. The partial slabs that do not block one’s view from front to back like usual whole-covered floor slabs successfully integrate public and private in this house.
Axonometric Structure
Long Section
Space composed of just two brace columns, skipped floors and openings to south and north is a three dimensional development of the traditional wood structure consist of floors, pillars and openings to road and garden. This is to propose a prototype of a wooden structure housing in Kyoto where grids are broken down into strip-shaped housing lots.
From the architect. It is not so easy to find a comfortable workspace in Saigon. Most people have to work in the cramped urbanscape; everything becomes stifling and polluted atmosphere, where there is less and less open voids, green parks & community spaces becoming very rare in the city.
Conceived from cool canal systems, the movement of life, which looks like the blood veins of Saigon, is slowly being bridged and land filled by the lack of vision of hasty development. However, those very few remaining inventory of the river are saving the urban gaps in Saigon. Contrary to the current focus on central cities, we ease the spatial orientation, improve peripheral development to find more porous gaps of the municipality.
Vietnamese Southern Culture has been growing up bythe river side, we always look forward to release along with the headroom gush endless flow of the Mekong. Since then, the office MIA Design Studio has been formed.
Section
To renovate the Office from a building in an available row of villas in Binh Thanh District, MIA Design Studio has selected land, which is adjacent to the river, to have a strong connection between the workspace and riverside landscape. The design idea is not so special, we just try to make working space simple and convenient enhance the adaption to the surrounding landscape, blur the boundary between inside and outside. A workshop and a conference room aremore than enough for a studio; we do not want to limit the space around the wall, only the decorative bulkhead with high usability for the models and materials, let the other things possibly become idyllic. That is a liberal or a link between inside and outside.
As part of ArchDaily’s coverage of the 2016 Venice Biennale, we are presenting a series of articles written by the curators of the exhibitions and installations on show.
As an architectural device the pool represents a physical edge but it also expresses a social and personal frontier. This is explored through the narratives broadcast in the exhibition space for which we have selected eight storytellers: Olympians Shane Gould and Ian Thorpe; authors Anna Funder and Christos Tsiolkas; musician Paul Kelly; environmentalist Tim Flannery; fashion designers Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales from Romance Was Born; and Indigenous art curator Hetti Perkins. Their interviews reveal stories of fulfillment and accomplishment, of segregation and inclusion, of learning from the past and reflecting for the future, all through the lens of the pool.
“As access to a public pool in the post-WWII decades came to be regarded as a right and not just a luxury, their potential as sites of safe swimming but also generators of social capital became the subject of parliamentary debate.”
– Hannah Lewi, from ‘More than just a hole in the ground’, in Celebration: The 22nd Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia
Mysterious and familiar, tame and wild, natural and man-made, a pool is where the communal and the personal intersect. The pool is a vital force in Australian life, not only as the setting for formative childhood memories, family gatherings and community events but also as the stage for sporting feats that fuel the nation’s pride. A backdrop to the good times, the pool is also a deeply contested space in Australian history, a space that has highlighted racial discrimination and social disadvantage.
The Pool uncovers a vast commentary about Australia and our values as Australians, and explores how this intersects with our architecture. Few spaces can represent so simply and wholly the identity and passions of a nation and inspire such a complex narrative. By celebrating the cultural signifcance of pools in Australia, we seek the critical engagement of architects in a broader public debate about the civic and social value of the spaces we create.
For all their immediate appeal, pools in many communities in Australia are facing signi cant challenges as social institutions. High maintenance costs and labour-intensive operations mean that the pool does not resist the scrutiny of economic rationalism. Improving the economic model of a pool is certainly an issue worth addressing, however the social capital of the pool needs equal consideration in this equation: it is more than a place to swim, it is a place for people to gather and share experiences, highlighting signi cant community value.
The stories of The Pool are unapologetically personal, subjective and anecdotal. They are a selection of many possible narratives that acknowledge the breadth of our audience and of our contributors. Using The Pool as a platform for the sharing of stories, we have created a space for discussion that is accessible to all. A place where we can all participate, observe and learn.
Sig Nordal 