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Sweeping lines from Outdoor Living & Holiday Home Trends volume 2313
If you're looking for a pool that will give you space to work out, but also encourage you to relax and unwind, a standard lap pool may not be the answer.
For the owners of this pool, a decent-sized exercise pool was required, as was a spa and patio area. They also wanted to save the many fine specimen trees in the garden. But the designer, Mike Jack of Natural Habitats, could see a way of adding another dimension.
"From a design point of view, I wanted to stretch the boundaries of a typical lap pool, with its linear shape, so I decided to draw on the architecture of the house," he says. "The walls of the house are straight and linear, although they incorporate some unusual angles, so I drew on the one curve that exists – the roof line."
The result is a pool that combines the functionality of a lap pool with the sensuous curves of a tropical plunge pool. The 20m-long pool bows out to 4 metres at its widest point, allowing the owners to relax in the water as well as cover the laps.
Neil Runciman of Frontier Pools, who custom made the pool, says the pool shape is novel, but predicts that he'll work on many more pools like this in the future.
"The long curve, with its shallow gradient down one side of the pool and heavy planting adjacent to it, makes the shape very distinctive," he says.
The curved shape also allowed several large trees to be saved during excavations of the pool, including a 3m-high butea palm and a mature dragon tree.
"The previous owners had planted extensively and there was a lot of mature specimens that we wanted to save," says Jack. "Some of the plants were so unusual that a council botanist was called in to take cuttings and propagate the rarest ones."
The dense planting, including banana palms, dragon trees, hibiscus, queen palms and bungalow palms, ensures that the owners' privacy is maintained.
"With such lush planting, dark blue was a clear choice for the pool and spa tiling," says Runciman. "The contrast creates a tropical feel and the colour helps to accentuate the pool's unusual shape."
The owners of this 1990s home wanted a pool that they could swim in, but one that would nestle into the landscape and make the most of the garden's mature planting.
The orientation of the pool gives uninterrupted views of the coastal headland from the patio and the far end of the pool. The pale grey pavers of the patio contrast with the darker tones of the pool and vegetation, as well as the darker grey rendering of the home's external facade.
The plan shows the extensive planting along the curved edge of the pool.
The site slopes steeply away from the house, with the pool finishing several metres higher than the lawn. To disguise this, a hedge was planted running along the straight north-eastern boundary. The hedge is clipped to become higher as it follows the slope of the land, which helps the pool to settle into the landscape.
At 20 metres long, this pool is suitable for serious swimming as well as relaxing. Predominantly northeast facing, the pool and in-ground spa receive sun for most of the day.
Credit List
Pool and spa builder
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Frontier Pools Construction
Pool interior
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Diamond Brite in Midnite Blue
Spa
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Frontier Pools Construction
Pool and spa heating
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Jandy Gas Heater from SSL
Pool and spa engineering
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Thorburn Consultants
Hard and soft landscaping
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Natural Habitats
Excavation
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Brian Hoffman Ltd
Paving
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Stevensons Veneto Paving
Photography by Kallan MacLeod
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