These five free-to-read stories explore the role of water in cities across five decades

Few building types reveal as much about a society as the places it chooses to submerge itself in. From Alvaro Siza’s swimming pools in Leça da Palmeira and Gowan’s glass dome above Hampstead Heath to an aquatic centre in Colombia, water has always been architecture’s most revealing medium – a way of stripping bathers of status while somehow making the social order more visible than ever. This week’s reading list features five free-to-read stories which trace that tension across five decades.

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Typology: Swimming pools, AR August 2015, Tom Wilkinson
‘Their 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’

Swimming pool in Hampstead, London by James Gowan, AR March 1969, AR editors
‘Like a glass UFO alongside Hampstead Heath, Gowan’s swimming pool is both graceful and technically striking’

Revisit: tea house and swimming pools, Leça da Palmeira, Portugal by Álvaro Siza, AR April 2019, Manon Mollard
‘The tea house never lets itself be understood at a single glance. It is only though glimpses that it slowly reveals its character’

Aquatic centre by Paisajes Emergentes, Medellín, Colombia, AR February 2011, Michael Webb
‘Here he has turned a simple plan into a multi-level experience of shifting perspectives and complex geometries’

Dún Laoghaire Baths in Dún Laoghaire, Ireland by DLR Architects Department and A2 Architects, AR July/August 2024, Lisa Godson
‘The identity and history of this maritime town will be more fully articulated and its natural environment made more useful for the public, and the publics to come’

Lead image: The project’s lowest level is a vast plaza close to the water, offering people space to stroll, play, rest, gather and exercise. Credit: Ste Murray