Signals & Stats : Daily Signals

Soil and water

By Alex Jordan 21 : 05 : 2015 Ooze : Marjetica Potrc : Of Soil And Water

London – Dutch architects Ooze and Slovenian artist Marjetica Potrc are taking back land for Londoners with a natural swimming pond built on one of the city’s many construction sites.

Of Soil and Water is a micro-ecological environment with a natural swimming pond at its centre
Daily number of bathers is restricted by the amount of water the plants are able to clean

Of Soil and Water: King's Cross Pond Club by Ooze Architects and Marjetica Potrč, London

Venturing into a veritable no man’s land of barren earth, JCBs and scaffolding, the team have created Pond Club, a temporary natural swimming pool that will welcome visitors from Friday until development forces them to leave. Located on the construction site for the King’s Cross Central development project, the swimming pond self-purifies through a closed-loop process using wetland and submerged water plants.

‘This area has historically been a place for travel and, within it, there has been nowhere to go,’ explains Ooze co-founder Sylvain Hartenberg. ‘I lived in London for many years, and at that time this area only had gas containers and blank walls. But maybe behind those walls there was beautiful nature.’

The Big Picture: The divide between rural and urban is blurring. Help your customers feel closer to nature in the city using our Whole-system Thinking macrotrend.