Redcliffe Wharf Outdoor Swimming

Research aim: How can an intervention encourage clean, safe and financially viable swimming within Bristol Harbour, while benefitting the local community during Bristol's European Green Capital Year of 2015?

THE client: Nudge Group, Alistair Sawday, Clear Water Revival

THE TEAM: Kyle Wylde, David MacDonald, Ben Pratten, Richard Kennedy, Louisa Heyworth, Will Kerry

The brief was an unprecedented opportunity to play a part in Bristol’s future as part of Green Capital 2015 and to create the most iconic landscape that the City has seen for a generation. The design of a floating swimming pool in Bristol’s floating harbour. Three design options were set out for us to explore:

Option 1: Encourage swimming within the existing Harbour through the creation of more basic interventions i.e. provision of changing facilities, floating pontoon for diving off, roping an area off etc.)

Option 2: Design of a larger scale floating pontoon with/without some form of water filtration system and with/without heating, forming individual pools, diving platforms, seating areas.

Option 3: Design of a concrete barge structure, containing a heated swimming pool.

Our approach was to devise a scheme which accommodated a variety of means for approaching the land/water threshold. A final option combined the most feasible and cost effective approaches from the previous options and included our ideas for an integral funding scheme. The eventual pool design would be constructed from a series of pontoons, based on a prototype design which could be constructed on site by the local community. The series of pools would also be filtrated by a water treatment system devised at UWE.

UWE Master of Architecture students: Kyle Wylde, David MacDonald, Ben Pratten, Richard Kennedy, Louisa Heyworth, Will Kerry

Clients: Nudge Group, Alistair Sawday, Clear Water Revival

Project length: October 2014 – November 2014