Pools, Baths and Lidos

NOTES: This substantial steel-framed house on a twenty-acre sloping site was designed by Bronek Katz R. Vaughan & partners for Mr Fred Kobler, managing director of Grand Hotels (Mayfair, London). An assistant architect of the practice, John Heath, was responsible for the interior design.

SOURCE: Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Vedute di Roma (Rome, [1747?-1788]), pl. 116 NOTES: The Baths of Diocletian were built in 298-306; the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli occupies the central hall of those Baths. Michelangelo designed the conversion in 1563-1566 for Pius IV, but Vanvitelli altered the church in 1749.

SOURCE: Builder, vol. 35, 1877 Dec. 8, p. 1224

SOURCE: Paolo Antonio Paoli, Avanzi delle antichita esistenti a Pozzuoli Cuma e Baja (Naples: 1768), pl. 54 NOTES: The ruins of the Terme di Baia represent the remains of a Roman imperial palace (1st century BC-3rd century AD) where the so-called Tempio di Mercurio formed part of the baths. Its dome is thought to be the oldest example of a large-scale dome, pre-dating the Pantheon.

NOTES: This and another drawing of the Baths of Caracalla were made in connection with four lectures on Roman architecture given by Aitchison at the Royal Academy in January or February 1889.

NOTES: This house was built for the landscape architect Christopher Tunnard who himself designed the gardens.

NOTES: Part of the Burlington Devonshire Collection, this drawing (copied by Isaac Ware from Palladio's conjectural reconstruction of the 1540s) was prepared for 'Fabbriche Antiche disegnate da Andrea Palladio Vicentino, e date in luce da Ricardo Conte di Burlington', (London, 1730), for Lord Burlington. The baths of Nero, built between 60 and 64 AD, were the second of the Imperial public baths in Rome. They were rebuilt in 227 by Alexander Severus and became known as the Thermae Alexandrinae.

NOTES: Part of the Burlington Devonshire Collection, this drawing (copied from Palladio's conjectural reconstruction of the 1540s) was prepared for 'Fabbriche Antiche disegnate da Andrea Palladio Vicentino, e date in luce da Ricardo Conte di Burlington', (London, 1730), for Lord Burlington.

NOTES: Part of the Burlington Devonshire Collection, this drawing (copied from Palladio's conjectural reconstruction of the 1540s) was prepared for 'Fabbriche Antiche disegnate da Andrea Palladio Vicentino, e date in luce da Ricardo Conte di Burlington', (London, 1730), for Lord Burlington. The Baths of Titus were built by Emperor Titus to celebrate the opening of the Colosseum in 80 AD.

NOTES: Milton Keynes, which incorporated the existing towns of Bletchley, Wolverton and Stony Stratford along with another fifteen villages and farmland in between, was designated a new town in 1967 and planning control was thus taken from elected local authorities and delegated to the Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC).

NOTES: The Swiss Cottage Swimming Baths and Central Library were the only completed buildings of a scheme for a civic centre in Hampstead. These baths and Coventry Central Baths, designed by Coventry City Architects Department in 1966, were the only complexes of the period to be built with three pools.

NOTES: Designed in 1956 and built in 1962-1966, these swimming baths with attached sunbathing terraces were amongst the most ambitious of those built during a short period in the 1960s when such complexes were encouraged. These baths and Swiss Cottage swimming baths, Hampstead, designed by Sir Basil Spence Bonnington & Collins and completed in 1964, were the only complexes of the period to be built with three pools.