There's something irresistible about swimming pools in all sorts of seasons - it is indeed hard to resist to the call of crystal clear waters sparkling in front of you, or to the possibility of diving into the water and, for an instant, blocking out all your worries and pains.
Britain has got its own special link with lidos and swimming pools, as highlighted in a show that will be opening this week at London's Victoria & Albert Museum.
Organised by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), in partnership with the V&A, "Into the Blue: The Origin and Revival of Pools, Swimming Baths and Lidos" (20th July 2019 - 19th April 2020; Architecture, Room 127 & 128a), is a visual story of British swimming pools told through the architectural drawings, photographs and models from RIBA's collections (you can check out further images of pools, baths and lidos from the RIBA archive at this link).
Early bath houses from the 17th century in Great Britain were modelled in the style of Roman baths. At first communal bathing areas were designed to provided people with public access to washing and laundry facilities.
In the 1800s dirt was perceived as a sign of immorality by the Victorians and first and second class baths were established as a health solution especially after cholera epidemics prompted the 1846 Baths and Wash House Act.
As the decades passed, though, things slowly evolved: swimming became more appreciated and, by 1875, London boasted the Charing Cross floating bath moored on the Thames at Hungerford Bridge (it closed in 1884). The floating bath was a "men-only" facility as women were rarely taught to swim (which meant that in sinking disasters most victims were usually female).
When swimming became more popular and started being considered a healthy and recreative hobby, mixed bathing facilities arrived on the scene, radically changing the collective habits of people who went to swimming pools and lidos to socialise, sunbathe, relax and have fun.
Many pools opened along the English coast in the 1930s, and 169 lidos or open-air pools were also built, among them the Saltdean Lido in Brighton.
There were swimming pools in pastel colours or with an Art Deco style, while others were particularly refined and elegant thanks to their gilded interior (the exhibition features for example a drawing of the grand Empire Pool in Wembley, opened in 1934).
Swiming pools returned to a more functional purpose after the war with hundreds of public baths being built between the 1960s and the early '70s.
Things changed in the decades that followed with swimming pools closing down in the '80s and '90s, but there is currently an open-air lido revival in Great Britain, while restoration and regeneration of historic pools provided a new life to establishments such as the Jubilee Pool in Penzance, Cornwall. Originally built in 1935 and designed to resemble an anchored ocean liner, the largest seawater lido in the UK was saved by a public campaign and reopened in May 2016 after a £3m repair project by Scott Whitby Studio (it currently organises different fun events including inflatable unicorn and flamingo derbies...).
From austere and brutalist pools to Art Deco ones with or without diving platforms, from Roman baths to Zaha Hadid's London Aquatics Centre, "Into the Blue" includes drawings, models, photographs and film footage of various places such as the Saltdean Lido, Broomhill Pool Trust (with historic film footage from 1947 and stills of the derelict pool in 2001), New Brighton Lido and Victoria Baths in Manchester.
The exhibition combines architecture with a social investigation as people go to lidos and swimming pools to be alone and exercise but also to spend time together and socialise.
There are still some battles to fight when it comes to swimming pools as the future of some of them is still precarious, but the main point of this event is not just pondering about the loneliness and sadness that are instantly generated by an empty pool, but about the endless fun, joy and delight that lidos and swimming pools can give to people.
While drawings, models and photographs are all cool, the exhibition should have maybe been accompanied by its own soundtrack (the list of water-related tracks is long - Moby's "Into the Blue" should be an obvious choice...) and should have included a small selection of swimwear from the V&A fashion collection. After all, you need architecture, but also fashion to trigger the imagination of visitors and conjure up dreamy fantasies of a refreshing swim in their minds.
Image credits for this post
Saltdean Lido, East Sussex, by RWH Jones, 1938. Photographed by John Maltby © John Maltby / RIBA Collections
Southport Colour lithograph by Fortunino Matania (1881- 1963), issued by the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company, ca. 1930, V&A Collection
Machine-knitted wool swimsuit, Neyret, 1937, V&A Fashion Collection
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