“Plastic is fantastic!” (2/6). Invented in 1969 by the architect Bernard Schoeller to meet the program “1000 swimming pools”, the municipal equipment, produced in series, is characterized by his dome, which opens like a heliotrope flower.
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The duo Germano-Swiss Grandbrothers found in the Bondy (Seine-Saint-Denis) pool a dream setting for their musical experiments. Invited by Arte.tv to give a concert under the dome of this strange vestige of the 1970s, Erol Sarp and Lukas Vogel installed, by the basin, the prepared tail piano and the electronic equipment with which they are used to to play. And they used architecture as an additional instrument, which was going to give their performance a particular tone.
At night, the large polyester shell that heads the swimming pool takes on the air of flying saucer straight out of a series B from the 1960s. By lit it from the outside, the duo transformed the portholes which pierce in light boxes that he could turn on, extinguish, vary in intensity at will … The beams that escaped slipped on the surface of the basin, sweeping the reflections of their image on the water, enveloping their powdery substance Red, green, blue flashes of work machines. 2>
retrofuturist charm
Registered on March 14, 2021, this concert ( Visible in replay on the site of the cultural chain ) testifies to the renewed interest in sunflower pools. Produced in series during the 1970s, these constructions with retrofuturist charm emblematic of the golden age of plastic marked the French landscape.
Their origin dates back to the late 1960s, when the major post-war housing and urbanization programs were slowly coming to an end. The construction of sports equipment appeared in the State as a means of relaunching its industrialization policy. The “1,000 swimming pool” program met this goal. Announced one year after the French swimming team had returned almost empty -handed from the 1968 Olympic Games, while a series of various facts involving children’s drowning had shaken the country, this vast plan, imagined by the general of Gaulle, also aimed to democratize the teaching of swimming. It provided, as its name suggests, to build a thousand swimming pools throughout the territory.
A competition of ideas was launched in 1969, divided into two components, one destined for large municipalities, the other to the small. With its dome which opens like a heliotrope flower whose petals would follow the movement of the sun, the swimming pool Tournesol earned Bernard Schoeller (1929-2020), French architect specializing in social housing, passionate also of mechanics and automobile, to win the first two prizes. The program required that the swimming pools be both industrialized (the elements should be mainly produced in the factory) and mechanized (they had to be able to serve as a place of training for schoolchildren during the year and leisure equipment, open, to beautiful days). Associated with the engineer Thémis Constantinidis, and the company Matra for materials, Bernard Schoeller imagined this system of polyester tiles carried by a structure of mechanical arches which opens at 120 ° by means of a small engine.
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