How frustrating to be surrounded by water and not being able to enjoy a swim!

Water, almost everywhere in the city, is the focus of this scheme – a swimming pool designed to sit on top of the water’s surface, giving the sensation of swimming on the lagoon rather than in Venice’s polluted and busy waters.

Designing in a context as strong as the city of Venice presents many challenges: how to integrate a contemporary piece of architecture within an urban setting where every building tells its own story? And more specifically, how the omnipresence of water can inform the design?

Adapting a number of recurrent elements from the cultural and physical characteristics of the city – ( piles, narrow footbridge, floating platform) and then mixing these with modern building elements (glass box, opaque volume, flying roof) the design brings these seven elements together within a bold geometrical form which, by opposition, reinforces the integration of the building into its context.