There’s certainly nothing down to earth at London’s Sky Pool, an unusual and controversial swimming pool that links two buildings ten stories above the ground and ‘above the pay grade’ of most building residents.
Past the surprise that anyone would especially want to swim across the street that high up, comes the controversy: at the Embassy Gardens development, only the wealthiest residents on the highest floors have the key; the rest of the apartment owners can’t get in.
A recent article in The Guardian (UK) points out that it’s only one of a trend of ‘even more implausible pools’ being created sometimes to amuse the wealthy and sometimes for other purposes. One pool in Cornwall is proposed to go 165 feet deep to train astronauts and advance undersea robotics.
One of the engineers who made Sky Pool happen told the Guardian that “A lot of people didn’t think it would happen. You often get crazy projects floated just to get publicity for a project and there’s never actually an intention of realising them. The technical solutions to them have never really been thought through, they’re just produced to grab people’s attention.”
In this case, however, a large piece of the technical solution had been around for quite a long time; its structure is based on the 19th-century Barton aqueduct that carries the Bridgewater Canal across the Manchester Ship Canal, swinging open for passing ship traffic. What’s different here is the material: Glass in place of concrete.
Among other unusual recent pools cited in the article are a 57th floor pool at the Hong Kong Ritz Carlton, and perhaps the most daring, a pool at Hotel Hubertus in the Italian Tyrol that has a glass-bottomed cantilevered swimming pool jutting out more than 50 feet over the Dolomite mountains.
