Today’s book is The Springboard in the Pond: An Intimate History of the Swimming Pool, by Thomas A. P. van Leeuwen. Hardcover published 1998 by M.I.T. Press (Graham Foundation/MIT Press Series in Contemporary Architectural Discourse). This is a handsome, profusely illustrated coffee-table book.
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 20th-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. Throughout the book, he weaves a series of analogies to three emblematic animals — frog, swan, and penguin — that represent the three prevailing human attitudes toward water: hydrophilia, hydrophobia, and ambivalence. The book’s many illustrations — drawings, plans, and photographs — come from an unusual variety of sources, creating what is surely the most provocative visual archive of the swimming pool ever assembled. – from the publisher.
The author is Professor of Architectural History and Criticism at the University of Leyden, the Netherlands.
Also currently in stock at BrainiacBooks.com:
Tropical Deco: The Architecture and Design of Old Miami Beach
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Tags: 20th century, architectural criticism, architecture, books, design, leisure, modernism, pool, pools, recreation, social history, suburban, suburbia, swimming, water
