The springboard in the pond
Subtitle: an intimate history of the swimming pool
By: Thomas A.P. van Leeuwen ; edited by Helen Searing.
Contributors: Searing, Helen.
Series: Graham Foundation/MIT Press series in contemporary architectural discourse
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Cambridge, Mass
Language: eng
Number of pages: 321
Subjects: Water and architecture; Swimming pools -- History
Description: Although others have written eloquently on the relationship of water to built form, until now no one has investigated the swimming, pool as a quintessentially modern and American space, reflecting America's infatuation with hygiene, skin, and recreation. In The Springboard in the Pond, Thomas van Leeuwen looks at a familiar hole - the domestic swimming pool - and discovers an icon indispensable to the reading of twentieth-century modernism.

At one level, the book is a rereading of modern architecture that will leave that story permanently altered. At another level, it is the story of the origin and evolution of the private swimming pool as a building type and cultural artifact. And at still another level, it is a material philosophy of water. Van Leeuwen explores the human relationship to water from a variety of viewpoints: social, religious, artistic, sexual, psychological, technical, and above all architectural.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 298-309) and index.