These five free-to-read stories explore the role of water in cities across five decades<\/p>\n
Few building types reveal as much about a society as the places it chooses to submerge itself in. From Alvaro Siza\u2019s swimming pools in Le\u00e7a da Palmeira and Gowan\u2019s glass dome above Hampstead Heath to an aquatic centre in Colombia, water has always been architecture\u2019s most revealing medium \u2013 a way of stripping bathers of status while somehow making the social order more visible than ever. This week\u2019s reading list features five free-to-read stories which trace that tension across five decades.<\/p>\n
Register for free<\/a>\u00a0to read today and receive future AR Reading Lists straight to your inbox<\/p>\n Typology: Swimming pools<\/a>, AR August 2015, Tom Wilkinson Swimming pool in Hampstead, London by James Gowan<\/a>, AR March 1969, AR editors Revisit: tea house and swimming pools, Le\u00e7a da Palmeira, Portugal by \u00c1lvaro Siza<\/a>, AR April 2019, Manon Mollard
\u2018Their utopianism is restricted by official ambivalence: provided in order to improve the body of the populace through hygiene and exercise, they are strictly supervised to prevent us straying into unproductive pleasure\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Like a glass UFO alongside Hampstead Heath, Gowan\u2019s swimming pool is both graceful and technically striking\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018The tea house never lets itself be understood at a single glance. It is only though glimpses that it slowly reveals its character\u2019<\/p>\n