Anyone who thinks Londoners prefer to play it safe may have to recant that opinion come May 19, when a pool positioned nearly 115 feet in the air opens to residents of the Embassy Gardens apartments.
Back in 2013, the EcoWorld Ballymore–developed, multiuse community in London’s Nine Elms neighborhood already boasted seemingly every luxury amenity imaginable: a rooftop sky deck with a covered dining area and a greenhouse specifically for fragrant orange trees, a stately red-walled private cinema featuring nine plush loveseats and movie-theater-style flat screen, a sprawling gym that rivals Equinox’s most coveted clubs, a high-ceilinged lounge suite with a full-service bar, a lush garden set in a calming ravine on the ground level, and a serene indoor lap pool open 24 hours a day. However, on a supremely warm summer afternoon almost a decade ago, Ballymore’s creative heads realized there was one essential amenity that the River Thames–adjacent Embassy Gardens lacked: an outdoor swimming pool that residents and their guests could enjoy on exceptionally hot days. That said, the only place big enough to house a swimming pool was the roof—and even that wasn’t quite the right size. So they decided to construct the world’s first floating pool, appropriately dubbed the “Sky Pool.”
The 82-foot-long heated oasis, which stretches across two flat roofs of the five-star hotel-like Embassy Gardens’ prominent Legacy buildings, is perhaps the world’s largest single piece of load-bearing acrylic. The structure—built in Colorado, transported to Texas, and then shipped across the Atlantic on a three-week-long journey—is completely transparent, making it appear like a rectangular glass box floating in mid-air. And part of it—46 feet, to be specific—kind of is floating in mid-air. While both ends of the basin resemble a traditional outdoor swimming pool (seamlessly filling a hollow in the ground and surrounded by a stylish patio), the central section is suspended in the sky (courtesy of its invisible steel frame).
The idea behind the floating section was twofold: First, it was the only reasonable solution that didn’t involve sacrificing the pool’s size, and, second, it allowed for swimmers to see the street and for city strollers to see the sky. Leaving this section as pared-down as possible, the architects installed steps and filtration systems on either end of the pool, leaving the middle 45 feet a minimalist’s aquatic fantasy.
In order to bring their vision to life, the developers brought on structural engineers Eckersley O’Callaghan and HAL Architects, who performed countless behavioral analyses to make sure the structure wouldn’t come crashing down—a fear any swimmer that high above ground may face. The engineers and architects landed on an eight-inch-thick acrylic frame with a nearly 12-inch-thick base that’s just shy of 10 feet deep and weighs a whopping 50 tons.
The idea behind the spectacular structure, inspired by New York City’s ultra-industrial Meatpacking District, was to push the boundaries of construction and engineering, bringing the future of design to the present. And after a year of canceled events due to the pandemic, the mesmerizing Sky Pool is about to become a reality.
Plus, night swimmers will get to enjoy sweeping views of the Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, and, of course, the Thames. Unfortunately for Londoners aching to take a dip in the floating Sky Pool, it’s only open to Eagle Club members, an exclusive social hub available only to Embassy Gardens residents and their guests.
After serving in the army during the Second World War, the photographer Slim Aarons famously declared that the only beaches he was interested in visiting ever again were the ones filled with bathing beauties tanning in the sun. He’d spend the next few decades jet-setting around Capri and the French Riviera, photographing those beaches: waking at dawn, soaking up the sun, sipping on his signature drink (ginger ale), and making portraits of celebrities and socialites in the process.
Throughout his career, Aarons captured the rich and famous poolside and beachfront, at expensive hotels and luxury resorts, from Newport to Acapulco. His sitters included Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, and Jackie Kennedy, but among the most well-known of his portraits is this one featuring the socialite and style icon C.Z. Guest. Here, she is pictured with her son, then five years old, at the pool at Villa Artemis, her mother-in-law’s oceanfront estate in Palm Beach.
Today, you can purchase prints and posters of this picture and dozens more by Aarons through Fine Art America, the art marketplace offering affordable, museum-quality prints to everyone from established collectors to newbie enthusiasts. To get into the summer spirit, we curated this group show of vintage images from Fine Art America, each with its own unique story.
This photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, captured at The Dorado Beach Hotel in Puerto Rico, appeared in Vogue magazine in 1959. Dahl-Wolfe, one of the leading fashion photographers of the day, was known for her use of vibrant colors and sunny outdoor locales. Now considered an early pioneer of “The Female Gaze,” she embraced a new view of empowered and liberated femininity for the postwar era.
Dahl-Wolfe’s women, decked in comfortable, wearable clothing, were active and independent; they traveled and lounged on beaches around the globe. Rumor has it she discovered a teenaged Lauren Bacall, and she’d photograph many of the era’s most prominent models. In 1984, she’d tell The New York Times, “The first model that ever inspired me was Liz Gibbons, this long, long girl whose skin was almost gold.” Gold–the color of sunlight on sand–remained one of her favorites throughout the years.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Dahl-Wolfe and other pioneering photographers of that generation, including Martin Munkasci and George Hoyningen-Huene, were friends, and they’d meet up regularly for pizza. Part of that friend group, of course, was Horst P. Horst, who helped define the early days of eye-popping color photography at Vogue.
This picture of “divers” decked in Izod bathing suits was created by Horst P. Horst’s mentor and partner, the photographer George Hoyningen-Huene of French Vogue. Through Huene, Horst would meet some of the most important luminaries of their time, including Cecil Beaton and Coco Chanel. In the mid-1930s, he would follow Huene in his role as the primary photographer at French Vogue. Years later, Anna Wintour would call The Divers, published in July 1930, one of her favorite photographs from Vogue history.
Another selection from the Slim Aarons collection on Fine Art America, this photograph from Saint Tropez in August of 1971 captures what many now consider the “golden age” of the French Riviera, a time shaped, in part, by the freedom brought on by the sexual revolution of the 1960s onward. In his own words, Aarons was a photographer of “attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places”; Saint Tropez, with its jet-setting elite, was a dream location for him. It was an era of elegance and hedonism, speedboats and villas, and lots and lots of sunbathing.
Sadly, many of his photographs were lost in the 1960s during a fire in his New York studio. Much of his work (prints and negatives) were unearthed once more at Vogue in 1986–they remain a timeless reminder of a short but prolific career. In this one, made in the California sand dunes, the four models are wearing bathing suits by Cole of California, Mabs, Caltex, and Catalina.
Clothing by Cole of California makes another appearance in this photo, created by Richard Rutledge for a 1957 issue of Vogue. The brand, founded by Fred Cole in 1925, helped revolutionize swimwear during this decade, as women started showing more skin and embracing the suntan trend. Cole is rumored to have introduced cotton swimsuits in the mid-1930s; decades later, he would collaborate with Christian Dior on a collection.
Anne Cole, Fred’s daughter, would become a swimsuit designer herself, tracking the trends that defined a generation of women’s beachside fashion. The industry would continue to evolve, and some swimsuits caused quite a stir. “When we first uncovered navels, people were so shocked that we had to airbrush them out of our ads,” she’d tell The Baltimore Sun in 1992.
This picture by the photographer (and famed costume designer) Cecil Beaton appeared in Vogue in 1948. Beaton, who got his start photographing his sisters, defied categorization. He was a favorite of the British royal family, but he also documented the war and met survivors of the Blitz. Throughout his life, however, Beaton’s passion for style and flair was a constant. In addition to photographing models and Hollywood starlets for Vanity Fair and Vogue, Beaton himself was a fashion icon, known for his Savile Row suits. “Perhaps the world’s second-worst crime is boredom,” he was fond of saying. “The first is being a bore.”
In 1962, Sean Connery and Ursula Andress starred as James Bond and Honey Ryder in Dr. No, Connery’s first film as 007. If you’ve seen the movie, you know the now-iconic moment where Andress emerges from the water and onto the beach, holding a shell. In this photo, you can see the two actors practicing handstands on set. “He was a great man […] a great friend and a fabulous actor,” Andress would remember after Connery’s passing in 2020.
To round out our collection, here’s another photo from Slim Aarons, this time chosen for the woman in the frame: Laura Hawk, who worked for Aarons beginning in 1981, when she was twenty-five years old. As part of her 2016 book, Slim Aarons: Women, she would later recall their first interview, in which Aarons asked her, “Can you be ready to leave with little advance notice?”, “Is your passport in order?”, and perhaps most tellingly, “Can you stand the sun?”
Over the course of more than ten years working with Aarons, Hawk would travel upwards of 400,000 miles with him, wearing many hats, from stylist to muse. Aarons captured this photo of his longtime assistant and all-around problem solver, whom he nicknamed “Old Bean,” while visiting the villa El Rincón, belonging to Baron Hubert von Pantz and Baroness Terry von Pantz, in Marbella, Spain.
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