Indoor Swimming Pool near Tours by Dominique Coulon & Associés

The French town of Fondettes near Tours, with a population of 11,000 has grown considerably in recent decades. Now a series of public facilities are to be built in a green belt on the outskirts of the town. One of the first is the l'Ô Bleue swimming pool – a play on words that can be translated as 'the blue water' – at the northern entrance to the town.

The surroundings of the new building are not very inviting: residential areas on an arterial road with a large roundabout. “The edifice plays the demanding role of signalling its presence while creating a new landscape," say the architects, describing the starting point of their design. And they continue: “Its contours are lunar and dreamlike.” Curved walls over 100 m long enclose the interior of the indoor pool and the lawn in front of it. They reach their maximum height above the two large pools: a 25-m sports pool and a 150-m learner’s and children's pool. The building also has a 2.5 m high slide with three parallel lanes.

Towards the neighbouring residential area, L'Ô Bleue seems rather closed in. © Eugeni Pons

The shape of the roof and the two large glass fronts that open the pool to the outside also follow the curve of the walls. This gives the interior a dynamism that contrasts with the rectangular arrangement of the pools and ancillary rooms. However, as is often the case with Dominique Coulon's buildings, the main protagonist in the new building is daylight. It enters the interior not only through the floor-to-ceiling glass façades, but also through numerous round porthole windows and a small courtyard between the entrance area and the pool hall.