Pools: We're still waiting for the summer weather to come to us in West LA but we can sympathize with our planetary comrades who've been enduring some of the worst summer weather ever. Of the last 17 years, 16 have been the hottest on record. If the trend continues—and why wouldn't it?—a backyard swimming pool may become more necessity than luxury.
A cocktail in a hammock with a nap: Bring it on.
The first swimming pool is believed to have been built in present day Pakistan in the 3rd millennium BCE (it was lined with bricks and a tar-based sealant). By the 19th century pools became popular on private estates, cities wanting to flaunt their social and urban modernity coveted indoor public pools. By 1837, six were built in London. They were also viewed as safe alternative to rivers where many bathers were known to drown.
By the sixties, the pool was the symbol of affordable suburban luxury. Kidney shaped pools inhabited the cul-de-sac backyards of the middle class along with their brick barbecues, wet bars, and electric kitchens.
The provenience of the image below is forgotten but it may've been from a hotel in Mexico, somewhere.
Brazilian architect Marcio Kogan's Casa Araras:
An indoor pool by the great Danish designer Verner Panton from the Hotel Astoria in Trondheim, Norway, 1960.
Below, one of the world's more famous indoors, the Roman pool at Heart Castle, San Simeon: Styled after the Baths of Caracalla in Rome c. 211-17 CE.
From the design of Eva Harlou, Denmark's architectural version of Kelly Wearstler. The Z House on the eastern coastline of Jutland: First below, the indoor pool; second below, as it appears from the outside.
The Sheats-Goldstein house by John Lautner with its semi-covered pool, 1963: The docents call it "probably the most dangerous house you've ever been in" because of its sheet glass walkway over a water feature with no handrails. Guests cross at their own peril.
Raymond Loewy, the designer extraordinaire who masterminded the Avanti ("the car that never dies"), had this Palm Springs house created for him by architect Albert Frey in 1947. Note how the pool intersects the threshold of the house.
This isn't an indoor pool but a room below the pool deck that looks into the pool. The house itself overlooks Hout Bay in Cape Town, South Africa.
Afternoon shadow play:
