Ever went swimming and thought to yourself: “Gee, this is fun, but it would be a whole lot better if I were doing this about 10 stories in the air and it felt like I was flying?” If you have, allow us to present the perfect solution for your highness: An 82-foot (25m) long glass-encased “sky pool” in the heart of London’s Nine Elms district.
The brainchild of Sean Mulryan, the chairman and CEO of Ballymore Group, the swimming pool has been designed by Arup Associates, with help from Eckersley O’Callaghan and aquarium designers Reynolds, and will be built between two high rises in the Embassy Gardens along with partners Eco World.
If all goes to plan, the sky pool will be built 10 storeys above the ground out of 20 cm-thick glass panels. It will measure 25m long, 5m wide and 3m deep, with a water depth of 1.2m. By comparison, the CN Tower’s glass floor is 6.35 cm thick, at a height of 342 metres. From this rarified vantage point, plutocrats and rarely visiting heads of megacompanies will be able to look down 35 metres at the plebian world below as they take a dip, with only 20cm of glass between them and the outside world. If that is a bit too high strung for you, there is also an indoor pool. And once you are done swimming, you can recover from your exertions on a sky deck which boasts a spa, summer bar and orangery with views of the Houses of Parliament.
The whole shebang is part of an ambitious £15 bn building project in south-west London which is creating thousands of homes, many of them in luxury apartment blocks.
“My vision for the sky pool stemmed from a desire to push the boundaries in the capability of construction and engineering. I wanted to do something that had never been done before,” Mulryan, told the press. “It will feel like floating through the air in central London.”
While a gimmick like the sky pool seems like it was created to go viral, some, such as Henry Pryor, a buying agent for wealthy clients, are skeptical of its actual appeal. He told the Guardian that he thought the plans for the pool were “genuinely crackers” and wondered if enough people would actually be interested in swimming in it.
Yet, even before the aerial floating tank, the first batch of Embassy Gardens apartments from 2012 have already sold out. You can currently “register your interest” on its site for a new block of apartments that will become available next month. Now the only thing holding you back from swimming through the air is the price tag—apartments start at more than $900,000.
Who said money can’t buy you everything?
nice