Glen Alvie · Bass Coast hinterland

Glen Alvie

An architectural concrete pool set into a rural hinterland block, designed to read with the land it sits in.

THE STORY

An architectural concrete pool set into the Bass Coast hinterland.

Glen Alvie sits in the hinterland behind the Bass Coast. The block carries the long views and the open paddocks the area is known for, and the owners came to us with a brief that was about the pool sitting in that landscape, not next to it. Most rural pools end up as a blue rectangle on a lawn. The brief here was the opposite. The pool had to read as part of the property, not a recreation feature dropped onto it.

The site gave us things a coastal block never does. Stable inland ground, a wider context that doesn't end at a fence, and a landscape big enough to swallow anything the geometry doesn't work with. None of the coastal pressures of salt or moving water tables, but a different challenge: a pool that reads as small against the size of the land it sits in, unless the line is right.

We worked the pool's line off the home, setting it long and low so the eye runs the length of it before it lands on the paddocks beyond. The coping is held flush to the surrounding paving so there's no raised wall to break the horizontal. The fence is frameless glass for the same reason. From the house and the deck, the pool reads as one continuous plane out to the rural view.

The shell is concrete, engineered and poured for the conditions of the block. Inside, the interior is tiled in a finish that suits the colour story of the land it sits in rather than the bright Mediterranean blue people sometimes default to. Equipment is set away from the home in a service area, so nothing visual sits between the home, the deck and the view. Heating

The result is a pool that earns its place on the property. It reads as part of the build, holds the view, and is finished for the land it sits in rather than the catalogue. Completed

IN PICTURES