Sydney: Prince Alfred Park Pool (Australia)

This is an intelligent, sensitive and engaging piece of architecture, landscape and urban design. The existing pool was retained and renovated but all existing buildings were removed and replaced with a landform element, 6m deep and 120m long, with all facilities built underneath – cafe, entry, offices, change rooms and service rooms.

This landscaped roof is beautifully shaped and detailed – low and intimate at the street side, the roof lifts towards the pool side opening all spaces to the sunlight and natural air. White funnels add more light to the change rooms without compromising privacy from the adjacent apartments, and green coloured funnels camouflage ventilation and exhaust ducts.

Delightful details like the funnels are embedded throughout the project – the clever children’s shade structure, the timber boarding alluding to older-style baths or the beach interspersed with blue walls, the palm trees, the yellow beach umbrellas and stainless steel fence like twin ‘Christo and Jeanne-Claude’ installations, and the amusingly cranked lights throughout the park.

This is a place to visit for multiple reasons, but it is definitely a special place for having a swim and relaxing by the pool on a sunny Sydney day.