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Architects: Claesson Koivisto Rune
- Area: 340 m²
- Year: 2016
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Photographs:Åke E:son Lindman
Text description provided by the architects. A spa with two pools has been completed adjacent to a 1796 mansion in south Sweden.
The spa has one indoor pool for wintertime and one outdoor for summer. The outdoor pool sits on a podium, which levels the slope on which the mansion sits. It thus creates a platform from which you have an elevated view over the estate towards the back. Yet, it sits discrete as seen from the approach to the main entrance.
The indoor pool is hidden inside the podium so that one pool could be said to sit on top of the other. The two spa areas are each other’s mirrors. The outside is protruding while the inside is hollowed out. But both share the same patterned concept.
Lending inspiration from the Gustavian (Neoclassical) mansion in general and parquet floor patterns from the time in particular, the concept is built on the chevron (French parquet).
Wood decking and custom precision laser cut tiles share the same chevron pattern in different scales. Two archetypically house-shaped structures stand, extrusion-like, on the podium next to the outdoor pool. The larger house makes for a roofed outdoor kitchen and dining place. The smaller and narrower house conceals the stairwell down to the indoor spa.
The spa harmonises with the mansion in proportions but does not recreate the historic style. House shapes and pattern are contemporary interpretations of classic composition.
The oversized (in comparison with normal parquets) tiles are white which allows them to be coloured turquoise by the depth of the water. Each step down into the pool thus is a deeper hue of turquoise. The water itself is not treated as a transparent ”nothing” but as a visible element and one of the materials on the palette. A material with the added function of beautifully lifting the tile pattern from the bottom of the pool to the surface, refracted and distorted by ripples.
Sauna and showers behind a dark tinted glass wall flank the indoor pool. The tint makes the glass act with more reflection that amplifies the chevron pattern. The whole spa palette is complete with only four materials: Wood, tile, water and glass – the chevron pattern from wood is superimposed on tile, amplified and modulated by water and reflected by glass.
