Sky Pool, Embassy Gardens, Nine Elms, Wandsworth, London
HAL was asked initially to look at a 25m rooftop pool on one of the buildings in phase 2, The Legacy Buildings, but it wouldn’t fit on one rooftop. The idea of a swimmable bridge between two buildings was born. Initial ideas were for an enclosed aqueduct, but views to the US Embassy and beyond demanded something else. Ballymore’s founder Sean Mulryan said: “If we’re going to do this let’s do it properly. It needs to be transparent.”
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Glass was too heavy. Engineers EOC suggested acrylic, as used in large aquaria. A trans-Atlantic collaboration between EOC and Colorado-based fabricators Reynolds Polymer Technology worked out how to achieve the Sky Pool’s unique span of crystalline acrylic that now forms the gateway to The Legacy Buildings – after being shipped across the Atlantic in one piece, delivered by barge up the Thames and then craned into place.
