This project repurposes an abandoned public park in the Second Ward of Houston into a vibrant public swimming pool. The proposal celebrates the neglected traces and characters in urban voids. Like an ellipsis in a sentence, this swimming pool beckons the imagination and playfulness from what’s already present at site with liminal additional “text” to the original context.

The design started from carefully tracing the tracks and indentations present at site. Following the indentations and intentions of the site, the swimming pool organically takes shape utilizing the natural topography. Minimal thick occupiable walls help complete the framing of the swimming pools, which include a competition pool, a children’s pool, and a deep-dive pool.

Rather than rewriting the site, the project’s minimal intervention enhances the activities that occur in the gaps of these urban voids. By embracing the unbuilt leftover space, the swimming pool becomes inseparable from the neighborhood and the site’s unique characters.