Flat Pools

Los Angeles River, California

2016

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Flat Pools is a speculative installation that places two-dimensional swimming pools along a stretch of the Los Angeles River basin. In Flat Pools, the vastness of Los Angeles River basin is mottled with reconfigured, two-dimensional swimming pools between the First and Sixth Street bridges.  A visual plunge into a collapse of figures, textures and color both is discordant with and reinforces the natural flatness of the Los Angeles River. Pools are merged together to form larger figures, which are distributed along the river to visually mitigate the river’s large scale and seemingly endless vanishing point. Three-dimensional geometries of pools are flattened - scoops are replaced with outlines, depth is replaced with a gradient “pool blue” color and splashes translate into intersecting lines, grooved into the river’s concrete surface.  At the scale of the river, the pools become puddles, muddling the sense of actual pool depth.  This encourages the reading of and the deciphering of the feedback between flatness and depth within the space of the installation. 

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Designers: Jackilin Hah Bloom, Florencia Pita

Project Team: Simeon Brugger

 

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