These public pools, or sundlaugs, serve as the communal heart of Iceland, sacred places whose affordability and ubiquity are viewed as a kind of civil right....The pool is Iceland’s social space: where families meet neighbors, where newcomers first receive welcome, where rivals can’t avoid one another. — NYT
Dan Kois considers how communal pools and the sociability of soaking, are "a key to Icelandic well-being."
On a related note, Dan Hill recently published an essay reflecting on ‘The Pool’, a book published as part of The Australian pavilion for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale. The interviews collected therein he finds, make a case for the pool as the authentically antipodean contribution to urbanism, a distinctly Australian public place, the country’s piazza.
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