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The designer John Thompson created a swimming pool for a house overlooking Lake Ontario that would relate to the forested landscape. Working with glass artists, Thompson evolved a translucent glass waterfall wall for the pool that reflects light onto the water, making the pool seem like a piece of lake lifted onto the slope. The glass wall is patterned after the ripples of sand made by lake water and contains 70 cast glass pieces in seven shapes, with a slit that allows water to continuously cascade down the textured surface softly or in robust splashes. At night, colored neon lights behind the glass make the wall multi-dimensional.

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39 views1 page

Arjun03delight PDF

The designer John Thompson created a swimming pool for a house overlooking Lake Ontario that would relate to the forested landscape. Working with glass artists, Thompson evolved a translucent glass waterfall wall for the pool that reflects light onto the water, making the pool seem like a piece of lake lifted onto the slope. The glass wall is patterned after the ripples of sand made by lake water and contains 70 cast glass pieces in seven shapes, with a slit that allows water to continuously cascade down the textured surface softly or in robust splashes. At night, colored neon lights behind the glass make the wall multi-dimensional.

Uploaded by

VuTienAn
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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AR JUNE '03 DELIGHT done

7/1/03

3:36 PM

Page 98

delight

A GARDEN FOLLY IN THE WOODS OF O NTARIO THOUGHTFULLY USES GLASS AND ELECTRICITY TO MAKE
SUBTLE COMMENTS ON NATURE, AND AT THE SAME TIME PROVIDES STIMULUS TO SWIMMING.

98 | 6

A turn of the century Canadian Arts and Crafts house overlooks Lake
Ontario from a small bluff. Its owners wanted a swimming pool and
asked designer John Thompson to create one that would relate to the
forested terrain. Initial hopes of building it entirely in granite to
harmonize with the landscape had to be abandoned on cost grounds
in favour of slate and grey render; only a granite diving rock remains
of the original intentions. But the result was gloomy, so Thompson
was asked to find some way of relieving it.
Working with glass artists SWON (Orest Tataryn, Alfred Engerer
and Andrey Berezowsky), he evolved a translucent wall of glass: a
waterfall that reflects light onto the smooth surface of the water
which ends with a negative edge so that the pool seems to be a piece
of lake inexplicably lofted up onto the slope. Thompson and SWON

chose to pattern the surface of the glass wall in a rhythm based on the
ripples of sand made by the water of the lake. Wall elements are of
glass cast against carved graphite moulds and coloured by careful
admixture of additives. In all, 70 pieces in seven basic shapes make up
the 3m wide, 2m high glass wall, that has a thin slit at the top from
which water continuously cascades, softly chattering over the texture
of the glass or splashing robustly into the pool. If you want, you can
sit at the base of the wall on an underwater bench below the
waterfall.
At night, the wall instead of reflecting, becomes multi-dimensional
with coloured neon tubes behind the glass. Integrated into the garden
with native and exotic trees and shrubs and a hardwood deck, the
pool and its glass wall make a magic moment in a semi-natural scene.

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