The first step in recovering the pool complex was to start the conversion of the main pool - 331/3 metres long and 12 metres wide - into an urban orchard and food garden. The cracks in the concrete which had opened up after 15 years exposure were widened into substantial drains into the sandy Gonville soil and block work was inserted to enclose a garden at the deep end and raised beds through the middle.


In went over 250m3 of soil and a month’s output from a food waste composting service. A grove of fruit trees along with vines, mānuka and an array of hydrangeas were planted and are flourishing two years later. The shallow end was left untouched as a patio and entertaining zone. All the surviving ladders, pipes and lane markings were left in place and easy access down into the courtyard was created with long runs of bleachers created from on-site demolition timber.

The former learners’ pool was re-coated and re-plumbed and put back into service for family use. The third and smallest pool, apparently designed for dunking babies, has been taken over by the youngest member of the family as a tiny water garden. Even the old pool announcer’s watchtower has been reimagined as a children’s lookout, complete with red and white lighthouse stripes.

The most dilapidated of the changing sheds along the south side of the pool were demolished and the rubble used as a drainage layer in the garden, the rest adapted to new uses, including a stand-alone apartment for visitors. The GCUR office and library occupy the 1970s kiosk addition - the most striking element of the streetscape.

At the heart of the redevelopment is a brand new house designed by Patchwork Architects. It sits comfortably amongst the generations of older structures - part of the leisure-industrial complex…



The brief was very simple: use the Patchwork design vocabulary, first laid out in their celebrated Dog Box project across the Whanganui River, to create a small-scale family home which honoured the history and urban aesthetics of the site. A sly reference to David Hockey’s California swimming pool paintings was thrown in as well. It is not formally a passive design, but it uses lots of glass and balancing thermal mass to catch and hold the Gonville sun under a deep roof overhang which keeps out the hottest rays.

From the south side, the only clue that there is something out of the ordinary about this particular corrugated iron shed amongst the other pool outbuildings is the yellow fibreglass drawbridge leading to a glass door. Once through that door, however, the secret is revealed with the sun-bleached blue of the ruined pool and the lush greenery of the garden filling the opposite wall of glass.

As realised, the Pool House sticks strongly to the virtues of its simplicity. The whole structure is a set of lanes, each demarcated by zig zag steel roof trusses recalling both the Charles and Ray Eames Case Study house and the strings of bunting which used to festoon the pool on race days. Its transparent north face makes it clear that the spaces inside swim within their lanes, with each of the the three bedrooms half-masked by a vibrant yellow panel of powder-coated aluminium. Internal walls are a mixture of exposed block work and birch ply and floors are polished concrete or cork tiles. That Patchwork vocabulary.

Three of the six lanes are given over to a combined living, eating and cooking space, backed with a wall of books and art. There are a lot of New Zealand studio ceramics and a luxurious reading bench for two. The steel box uprights of the built-in bookshelves reference the frame of a room divider rescued from the Ernst Plischke-designed Parsons Bookshop in Wellington and the mix of furniture straddles Eames and op-shop, with a 1950s red formica six-seater table occupying the prime spot in the sunniest corner.



The bedrooms - one of which has been repurposed as a family entertainment and Lego room - fit neatly into the simple grid plan with the bathroom and toilet, all of them using plain, durable but elegant materials. Each bedroom has direct access to the poolside walkway. And above them all are the trusses, which come and go, sometimes emerging from a partition, sometimes slicing through a space, eventually bookending it in a zig-zag of exterior glazing.


The Gonville Centre for Urban Research describes itself as “a place for the study and practical application of micro urbanism in a small, post-colonial and post-industrial city on the west coast of Aotearoa New Zealand”. The Pool House is by far the boldest expression of that ambition, consistent and completely fit for purpose. It's a statement, but a highly liveable one.

https://www.nzia.co.nz/awards/local/award-detail/11790

https://www.thisishere.nz/issue/issue-23

https://thelocalproject.com.au/articles/gonville-pool-house-by-patchwork-architecture-project-feature-the-local-project/

https://thedesignfiles.net/2024/07/architecture-gonville-pool-house-patchwork