Renovation of the Swimming Pool: Reviving Urban Memories

This project explores the topic of urban memory. The site is an abandoned swimming pool located inside Northwest University in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province. The pool used to be an important place for students and nearby residents. However, over time it was gradually forgotten. Trash piled up and the gate was locked.

The entrance to the pool was closed, and at the same time the memories and activities related to it were temporarily hidden.

In this project, we had the opportunity to reopen the pool as a public space. The design is not meant to criticize the loss of urban memory, but to start a discussion. While keeping the original pool mostly unchanged, we placed a series of maze around it. At the same time, we designed a set of water features at the bottom of the pool.

The maze partly hides the original pool, but still keeps it accessible. The water features at the bottom echo the pool’s past function, but they are also completely different from it.

This design not only keeps the space functional and provides rich public space, but also hopes to encourage people to think about urban memory.