" "The Springboard in the Pond" is a bracing intellectual plunge. A searching exploration of manners, morals, and darker truths in cultural and architectural history, it is both insightfully serious and wildly funny." -- Thomas S. Hines, "Los Angeles Times" " [R]ichly written and generously illustrated... van Leeuwen succeeds in showing us the depths beneath the tinest ripples of history." -- Phil Patton, "Civilization"
& quot; The Springboard in the Pond is a bracing intellectual plunge. A searching exploration of manners, morals, and darker truths in cultural and architectural history, it is both insightfully serious and wildly funny.& quot; -- Thomas S. Hines, Los Angeles Times & quot; [R]ichly written and generously illustrated... van Leeuwen succeeds in showing us the depths beneath the tinest ripples of history.& quot; -- Phil Patton, Civilization
""The Springboard in the Pond" is a bracing intellectual plunge. A searching exploration of manners, morals, and darker truths in cultural and architectural history, it is both insightfully serious and wildly funny."--Thomas S. Hines, "Los Angeles Times""[R]ichly written and generously illustrated... van Leeuwen succeeds in showing us the depths beneath the tinest ripples of history."--Phil Patton, "Civilization"
Although others have written eloquently on the relationship of water to built form, until now, no-one has investigated the swimming pool as a quintessentially modern and American space, reflecting America's infatuation with hygiene, skin and recreation. This text looks at the domestic swimming pool and discovers an icon through which to read 20th-century modernism. At one level, the book is a rereading of modern architecture that seeks to alter its story. At another level, it is the story of the origin and evolution of the private swimming pool as a building type and cultural artefact. At yet another level, it is a material philosophy of water. Van Leeuwen explores that human relationship to water from a variety of viewpoints: social, religious, artistic, sexual, psychological, technical, and above all, architectural. Throughout the book he weaves a series of analogies to three emblematic animals - frog, swan and penguin - that represent three prevailing human attitudes towards water: hydrophilia, hydrophobia and ambivalence. The book's many illustrations - drawings, plans and photographs - come from an unusual variety of sources.
The book is the second in a planned tetralogy by the author, with each volume centered on the relationship of architecture to one of the four classical elements.