More about the Piscine Josephine Baker
I haven't done a great job of keeping up with Paris news, but there is an article in Libération today about the new Piscine Josephine Baker.
I get a mixed impression from the description in Libé. The pool has immediately become a major attraction for Parisians, and people stay until closing time at midnight. Unfortunately, the pool is small- 25m long, 4 swimming lanes. Smaller than my neighborhood pool in the suburbs when I was a kid! Space is at a premium in Paris, but wasn't the point of putting a pool in the Seine that space was, in fact, available there? I don't know about the engineering constraints of making a floating swimming pool- but would it have been that much harder to make a bigger one? The article notes that you can't really swim laps because there are kids and adults all mingled in the lanes. Why not have built a main pool and then a separate kiddie pool? Would they have built a bigger one if Paris had gotten the 2012 Olympics? (That's it! Let's blame the Brits!)
Libé also mentions the old Piscine Deligny, another floating pool built,according to an old article in L'express, in 1801 and destroyed/sunk in 1993. Quotes in Libé from a people who remember it say it was very cruise-y and edgy- one woman's mother wouldn't let her go because "women were topless and the men were bizarre." There is no topless sunbathing permitted at Josephine Baker-begging the question of what the pool's namesake would think.
Here are some photos of the Piscine Deligny at Veritas et Venustas.
I have been to the Les Halles swimming pool, and other than being a little crowded, it's not bad. Natural light filters from a slanting glass roof in the Jardin des Halles, past tropical plants. The concrete ceiling is curved and has arching ribs like the inside of a scallop shell. I have heard others say it's a little cruise-y, but I didn't notice ...
Not to belabor Lyon, but it has a very nice open-air pool in the Rhone. There are actually two pools with decks and changing areas between them. What can be better than laying on a deck chair and looking at the buildings of centre-ville Lyon across the river, under a cloudless sky? Maybe doing all of that with a glass of rosé in your hand? There is a restaurant at the Piscine Josephine Baker.
I get a mixed impression from the description in Libé. The pool has immediately become a major attraction for Parisians, and people stay until closing time at midnight. Unfortunately, the pool is small- 25m long, 4 swimming lanes. Smaller than my neighborhood pool in the suburbs when I was a kid! Space is at a premium in Paris, but wasn't the point of putting a pool in the Seine that space was, in fact, available there? I don't know about the engineering constraints of making a floating swimming pool- but would it have been that much harder to make a bigger one? The article notes that you can't really swim laps because there are kids and adults all mingled in the lanes. Why not have built a main pool and then a separate kiddie pool? Would they have built a bigger one if Paris had gotten the 2012 Olympics? (That's it! Let's blame the Brits!)
Libé also mentions the old Piscine Deligny, another floating pool built,according to an old article in L'express, in 1801 and destroyed/sunk in 1993. Quotes in Libé from a people who remember it say it was very cruise-y and edgy- one woman's mother wouldn't let her go because "women were topless and the men were bizarre." There is no topless sunbathing permitted at Josephine Baker-begging the question of what the pool's namesake would think.
Here are some photos of the Piscine Deligny at Veritas et Venustas.
I have been to the Les Halles swimming pool, and other than being a little crowded, it's not bad. Natural light filters from a slanting glass roof in the Jardin des Halles, past tropical plants. The concrete ceiling is curved and has arching ribs like the inside of a scallop shell. I have heard others say it's a little cruise-y, but I didn't notice ...
Not to belabor Lyon, but it has a very nice open-air pool in the Rhone. There are actually two pools with decks and changing areas between them. What can be better than laying on a deck chair and looking at the buildings of centre-ville Lyon across the river, under a cloudless sky? Maybe doing all of that with a glass of rosé in your hand? There is a restaurant at the Piscine Josephine Baker.
posted by Françoise Villon at 12:28 PM
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