Making a splash with swimming pool design

The tide has turned in favour of making a serious architectural statement - as opposed to erecting a sturdy shed - when building a swimming pool. Emma Cullinan reports

It's easy to come over all metaphorical about the design of the new civil service swimming pool at Furry Park, Cloghran, Dublin 9 by Burke-Kennedy Doyle Architects.

The mono-pitched roof starts high and rises even higher, shooting out beyond the west-facing wall. This is in glass, with the water-filled pools behind it, giving it an aquamarine hue that turns the edifice into a wave ready to crash across the fields in front of it and eventually out to the Atlantic.

This "wave" emerges from some former buildings that the architects designed for Sportslink (the sports centre for public servants and their families) around 10 years ago. While the older structure fits its purpose and has some decent details, parts of it have aged badly in design terms.

A pitched atrium running across the roof, the mustard and timber walls, and the dull colour schemes in the bar, give it the feel of a provisional, three-star 1990s hotel. The new pool building has been successfully married with the previous structure, not least through the use of clever roofing links, but the latest addition is more beautiful and timeless. Timber and glass, designed well, have an amazing ability to give buildings aesthetic longevity.

The previous building looks as if some of it was compiled with ready-made components and the new pool building has an element of this too. But the shopping expedition for the latest components took in the designer outlets of the building industry. Scandinavia for the timber and Germany and the UK for other pool elements. The last time I looked, the UK's public pools were similar to Ireland's. Crumbling Victorian buildings that catered only for swimmers: the water started deep and got deeper. Toddlers and those with certain disabilities had to sink, swim or be held out of the water.

Now you can have sloping "beaches" and extremely shallow pools. How wonderful that parents no longer have to stand freezing for hours in the water introducing their babies to the concept of floating.

The new building has a mix of frames: the steel framed café and function area; the aluminium-clad concrete box that houses the extensive plant; and the beautiful timber structure that holds up the pool area.

To simply suggest that this building comprises a mix of components carefully selected on a spending spree would be disingenuous. Project architect Simon Healy (who worked with a team of four others at BKD) says that he has "a reputation for being fussy" and this building has benefited from his attention to the design.

His aim was to be "as architectural as possible" while meeting the clients' needs. They comprised a voluntary committee led by Liam Brennan - and the relationship between architect and client was a good one.

Simon Healy's overall aim was to see if he could "create an ordered building with timber". He looked to Classicism and Mies van der Rohe, rather than the curved wood of Alvar Aalto. The timber roof evenly spaces 11 glulam beam and 10 spaced bays.

Simon Healy belongs to the band of architects that researches, works hard and pushes for special design features. On the wish list were single-span glulam beams. These were made by a Danish company and shipped from Finland.

Logistics suggested that delivery would be so much easier if they came in two parts but Simon Healy didn't want "bolted plates in the middle ruining the look of them". His determination resulted in the 40-metre beams being carried to north Dublin on two lorries a piece - one front and one rear.

They are impressive - with the look of Viking ships about them. While many swimming pool buildings start high, to accommodate viewing galleries, the roof often descends from there. "This makes them look like industrial sheds," says Simon Healy. In Sportslink the roof starts high and climbs even higher. Other design issues that were pushed for - and now sit proudly in the building - include the double-height reception area. The clients initially weren't interested in losing floor space to a grand gesture, but Simon Healy convinced them that this introduces visitors to the idea that they have arrived somewhere special.

Other scale pushers include the tall internal and external doors, including high doors along a simple corridor. "The corridor was boring and I just can't help myself sometimes," declares Simon Healy. The doors have skirting running right around them, a BKD trademark.

Spider-like steel tension cables hold up the water slides (known in new-pool parlance as flumes) to suspend them lightly into the space. In a case of style over the human need to slide into water,

Simon Healy felt that the flumes would mess up his overall composition.

The upper function room acts as a bookend to the south. With views through large glass walls, over the pool and to the landscaping at the rear, this cantilevers, again not entirely necessary but beautiful.

Other design decisions, that add to the building, are the varying patterns of aluminium glass dividers: some are sparsely placed while others are close together, some creating a ladder effect. On the west of the building the glass wall is divided by slender bars but tougher structural members were insisted on by the engineers who were worried that the glass would blow in - this building is in a windy spot.

At the top of the columns, sliding mechanisms allow the roof to move without cracking the glass. Rain and snow push the roof down, while wind lifts it.

Such mechanics permeate the building, from the compressed-air driven wave machine, to the tidal "lazy river", bubble-yet pool, underwater cameras, and the mechanism that lifts the floor of the adult pool.

All of this technology is counterbalanced by the timber structure. "Swimming pools are very aggressive," says Simon Healy. "There's a lot of noise, a huge amount of mechanics and chlorine, which eats everything. It is very difficult to keep steel from rusting while timber works really well in pools as it needs little maintenance." The Scandinavians have used timber successfully for years in swimming pools.

As ever, the right timber has to be chosen for each project. In this case the structure is supported by Siberian larch which spends its formative years growing very slowly in a hostile environment. As a result it's very tough.

The timber uprights are remarkably slender, as is the width of the beams, and the join between the two is well expressed with chunky bolts. Continuing this theme, simple, crafty metal clasps hitch the beams to the roof.

Simon Healy is known for his interiors work at BKD and the fittings in this building reflect this, from the stainless steel brackets that hold the exit signs, to the large lamps set flush with the ceiling, the chunky plastic changing room door handles (the type of Danish design that cutting-edge architects used in the 1970s and which have stayed the course), and the industrial metal plates that house the shower controls in the communal showers (togs kept on).

It's interesting to see that public servants and members of other companies have such a beautiful place to swim in. There's some hope of a turning tide for the rest of us: Donnelly Turpin Architects is redesigning Rathmines pool, in Dublin, for instance; Newenham Mulligan Architects has created a new pool in Navan and the National Aquatic Centre was drowning in punters when it first opened. More please.