Poachers in Africa are encroaching on wildlife land and killing rhinos in travel hot spots now devoid of visitors due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Swimming pool purified by plants is now open in London
È stato inaugurato nel quartiere di King’s Cross il primo laghetto balneabile artificiale con acqua naturalmente purificata del Regno Unito.
Who doesn’t live by the sea but wants to enjoy a refreshing swim, is often forced to go to the swimming pool. The unpleasant chlorine’s smell and the use of products for water purififcation could represent deterrents.
England offers a valid alternative: the first natural swimming pool in the UK has been launched in London. It is a pond, surrounded by thick greenery, including pioneer plants, wild flowers, grasses, shrubs, which vary with seasons.
The peculiarity of the swimming pool, designed by the architects of the Dutch study Ooze and by the artist Marjetica Potrč, is the absence of chemical additives. In fact, water is purified and stored through natural processes, using submerged water plant to filter the water and keep it clear.
The swimming pool is located in King’s Cross and it is named “Of Soil and Water’: The King’s Cross Pond Club”. The pond is 10 metres wide and 40 metres long, and has been financed thanks to the Relay plan, artistic redevelopment program for the King’s Cross area.
The objective of the swimming pond, able to gather over 100 people, is to explore the relationship between nature and urban environment. Swimmers can admire the ever-changing pond’s landscape, a real small self-sufficient ecosystem home to flora and fauna, and raise their own awareness on their relationship with nature and on the consequences of their interaction with it.
“The project is a small-scale enclaved environment, a living laboratory to test balance and to question a self-sustaining system including one nature cycle – water, land and the human body,” said Eva Pfannes of the Ooze Study. “Here, we are collaborating with nature and the artwork encourages the viewer to participate in that experience. Water is a source of life but it is also a metaphor for regeneration.”
The number of daily visitors is limited, in order to allow the pond to regenerate. The bathing pool, managed by Fusion Lifestyle, non-profit body dedicated to sustainable sport, is expected to remain active for a maximum of 2 years.
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