Today, architecture has become - or is in the process of becoming - more flexible and individualistic to accommodate people's diverse lifestyles and spatial needs. With this adaptation, the residential typology has changed and living rooms have become endangered. Many insist on the need of having a space dedicated to relaxation and leisure, while others claim it is simply a waste of space and money. This debate raised an important question: do we still need living/sitting rooms? In this interior focus, we will look at how living rooms evolved through the years, and how architects readapted and integrated the concept of “gathering space” in contemporary residential architecture.

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Few architectural typologies have the power to invoke a sense of being dual-natured quite as the modernist swimming pool can. The design of pools themselves implies that there are moments of activity both above and below the water. Above, and in the more obvious and visible sense, pools act as a space for leisure and athletic training. But underneath the surface, swimming pools have a long-standing history of acting as symbols of surveillance, death, and social conditions associated with an economic class.