Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Spotting the pool house that architects Knox Bhavan designed for clients in the grounds of their Kentish home is a bit like playing Where’s Wally?The single-storey building, with its shadowy portico, is set into the hillside beneath a roof of dense vegetation. At either end, gently curved walls slope towards flower beds. When the putty-coloured cover is closed, the outdoor swimming pool disappears into the surrounding York stonework.The brick-built structure, set at a right angle to the house, replaced a larger, showier pool house. “The brief was to make this one as low-key as possible,” says the studio’s co-founder Sasha Bhavan. Concrete and mirrors were swapped for natural surfaces. From the house there are now views of smooth, tree-shaded lawns, but no swimming pool. As Bhavan puts it: “A pool shouldn’t be a feature in its own right, but part of the landscape.” It’s an outlook shared by many of her peers. A private watering hole may still have cachet (there are more than 200,000 in the UK) but it is becoming less conspicuous. Concerns, not just about water and energy consumption, but context, have prompted a rethink. The glinting azure rectangles of David Hockney are ceding to more organic designs: plant-fringed edges, silvery decking and lake-green linings melting into their settings. The rewilded pool.The most obvious influence behind this quieter aesthetic is the natural swimming pool — a German import. Self-trained advocate David Pagan Butler has taught hundreds of homeowners how to make their own chemical-free pools. These rely on native plants — water mint, flowering rush — to keep the pool water clean. His first YouTube video, in 2010, had 2mn views in one night. But not everyone was convinced. “Some people were appalled by the idea of jumping into a cold pond,” he says. The popularity of wild swimming has changed that: “We’re also much more aware of our impact on wildlife, and disappearing species. Creating more natural ponds contributes to our countryside’s diminishing freshwater network and biodiversity,” says Pagan Butler. He advises owners on how to “naturalise” conventional pools by introducing flora and fauna alongside his own inventions: a low-energy aquarium air compressor for circulation and a floating filter. (If frolicking with newts is not your thing, plant life can be separated by a wall.) A bright blue pool might look enticing in the heat of an Ibizan summer but it jars with the British countrysideIn the gardens of a mill house in West Dorset, landscape designer Charlotte Harris, of Harris Bugg Studio, is currently working on a sequence of natural pools linked by decking made from a fallen oak. “We are seeing a clear shift among clients who want us to design increasingly sympathetic relationships between gardens and landscapes, and their pools,” she says. Particularly a naturalistic style “that speaks of lake dips”.They can still be “crisp and contemplative,” she says. But: “With the advent of non-chemical pools, [they] can be engineered and designed to feel effortlessly placed in the landscape. No more turquoise islands. Pools today are about a seamless connection with nature.”Trends in architecture are also shaping the look of pools. Instead of the swaggering, neoclassical new build, homeowners are looking to the vernacular — weatherboarding, clay tiles, flint, rammed earth — for more subdued dwellings. The same approach is being applied to pools. “Invisibility”, says architect Andrew Inchley of Yiangou Architects, was the starting point for a wellness centre in the grounds of a private Berkshire estate. Tucked at the foot of a sloping lawn, the wavy frontage, reminiscent of a traditional crinkle-crankle wall, hints at the interior: a pool, gym and traditional Japanese bath by design studios Turner Pocock and Light House Designs. On a smaller scale, architect Tessa Baird of OEB Architects looked to the seaside vernacular for an indoor therapy pool set in the gardens of a Victorian villa. The exterior is clad in creamy, swirling render with arched openings that are typically 19th century in style. Inside, a long window overlooking the shoreline adds to the feeling of being at sea. “A bright blue pool might look enticing in the heat of an Ibizan summer but it jars with the British countryside,” says garden designer Charlotte Rowe. Alongside new ones, Rowe is also asked to redesign older watering holes, trading concrete for stonework or clay pavers, installing dove-grey linings or grassy planting which spills across the water. The landscape-friendly pool is not just for grey British climes. In rural Catalonia, Barcelona-based Mesura architects used ceramics and stones dredged from the local riverbed to build a new, earth-hued house and pool. Both merge with the wooded setting. In Britain, a pool’s location will depend on planning. “There are no hard and fast rules,” says Stefan Pitman, founder of Dorchester-based architectural practice SPASE. “It varies according to local policies.” Whether archaeological concerns, conservation listings or trees with preservation orders, “every plot will have its constraints”.Landscape was the starting point for the eco-house that architect Wendy Perring designed for clients in the New Forest. Completed 13 years ago, it is a template for PAD Studio’s “place-specific” approach. House and pool, designed using the same silvery timbers, sit quietly in the 18.5-acre, beech-strewn setting. “The objective was to create a simple building whose form, scale and materials reinforced the distinctiveness of the site locally,” she says. The pool’s design references the forest’s dew ponds. One half is for swimming, the other teems with plant life, its carpet of waterlilies catnip for dragonflies and swallows. Excavated soil was used to build a protective earth berm — a land bank — as an acoustic buffer. This also prevents run-off (which can lead to algae) into the pool. It was early Hollywood that gave us the pool as a symbol of success — and excess — writes Thomas AP van Leeuwen in The Springboard in the Pond: An Intimate History of the Swimming Pool. For the actors Mary Pickford and her husband Douglas Fairbanks in the 1920s, it was a banana-shaped pool complete with canoeing ponds. Mary Astor dug a 100ft lagoon with a beach. The home of actor Johnny Weissmuller had a meandering 300ft river. And all built in desert terrain. In more sober times the emphasis is on suitability, not scale. In the gardens of his 1920s hacienda-style house in Pasadena, interior designer Todd Nickey’s pool was built from scratch. “I seriously considered a natural pool,” says Nickey, co-founder of Nickey Kehoe. “But half my household weren’t keen on swimming with critters.” His elegant compromise is an “old school” 30ft-long rectangle hugged by a dense border of plants. Citrus and olive trees, salvias and spiky succulents surround it like an exotic riverbank. To fully appreciate its landscape-centric design, guests are advised to jump in. “When you’re in the pool you have a completely different vantage point,” he says. “You feel immersed in nature.”Find out about our latest stories first — follow @FTProperty on X or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
