BE OPEN BLOG

Every summer we dream of creating the ultimate outdoor oasis, complete with a beautiful place to take a plunge. Not only these poolside spaces will leave you feeling refreshed and inspired, they are also stylish and extraordinary.

Designed by Canadian firm SMStudio for a small family as a replacement for the tired 1950’s bungalow, the playful East Van Residence in Vancouver features a swimming pool with underwater windows.

The arrangement of rooms in the house inverts the typical residential layout by placing the kitchen, living and dining rooms on the upper floor, and instead locating the bedrooms on the entry level enabling the occupants to take advantage of views of the adjacent park. In order to create a sense of openness in the upper floor, the project utilizes LVL beams to span the width of the room without the need for additional supporting columns.

The lower floor is organized around a sunken, landscaped courtyard that is lined with board form concrete and allows an abundance of natural light to flow to the lower floor. Pool windows cut into the boardroom concrete and allow for a playful conversation between swimmers and bystanders.

Designed by two Manhattan studios, architectural studio Steven Harris Architects and the landscape and interiors firm Rees Roberts & Partners, Bridgehampton Beach House is characterized by a curvy canopy with a rooftop reflecting pool.

The 1,115 sqm residence was created for a couple of New York executives who wanted a family holiday home that embraced the dune-filled landscape and was suitable for enjoying time with friends and family.

Inspired by the work of Roberto Burle Marx, the late Brazilian landscape architect who often incorporated organic forms into his designs, the U-shaped building was conceived as a series of cantilevered, rectilinear volumes pivoting about solid brick masses.

Just like with the East Van Residence, the kitchen, dining area and living room are located on the upper level, offering a panoramic vista of the ocean over the nearby dune, which would otherwise have blocked the view.

A range of outdoor spaces include a pavilion covered by a sculptural canopy with a curved underbelly and reflecting an infinity-edge swimming pool on top, reflecting the sky and accentuating the immediacy of the ocean from the home’s living room.

Argentinian-Spanish artist Felipe Pantone, who is known for his unabashed use of light and color in his pixelated artworks, has used 130,000 mosaic tesserae by ONIX to create a prismatic spiral of colour in Chromadynamica Pool, a residential swimming pool in a seafront home in Jávea, Spain.

The optical effect shakes up the modest-looking architecture of the residence and makes the rippling water whirl as the glass mosaics play with the sunlight, amplified by the whirlwind-like placement of the tesserae.

Like with his other works, Pantone starts his creative process with a digital phase where he turns to a number of computer programs to create designs that can later be translated into a physical object.