The Carbondale Aquatics Center opens to the public Saturday, May 23rd, 2026. Architecture is sometimes about architecture, and sometimes it’s not. Like this place for me, it’s more about being a place people love.
It’s also architecture but isn’t about architecture.
In the summer of 2008, while the architectural world was in free fall, I swam lunch time laps at the Carbondale Pool. I felt only a little bad about kicking out the kiddos for the hour of my lap time. My eyes burned and afterwards my hair felt like straw; and I loved it. There is a certain something about lap time on a hot day. Tiring, and relaxing. It tugged at magical summer pool memories from childhood. And then I loved lap time for all the summers that followed, until I was very involved in demolishing that pool.
In the 1980’s I rode my bicycle to the YMCA. That packed pool deck was a relief valve from the heat and tedium of long summer afternoons. My sisters and I snacked on potato sticks and cans of lemonade, learned to dive, and learned to swim. We complained about forced breaks for adult lap time and ran around the nearby woodsy areas, making mischief and friends. We claimed we were not cold. No matter how late and how blue. Marco. That pool had a particular sound, temperature, and place-ness. Polo. Close your eyes and you can summon your hometown pool, maybe it’s later, and the crickets sing, and you can see some little bugs flitting in the dusk light. Wire fencing. Utilitarian bathrooms. It is a picture of the community where I grew up. Yours may be very different, but no less magic.
This current Carbondale pool magic is happening after a long wait, and a bit of a tightrope walk in terms of funding, but we made it.
Marilyn Monroe famously had a policy of editing. She would get put together and then remove one accessory. Put everything on and then edit one thing. The excess bangle, the scarf you don’t need. I’ve thought about that a bunch. And it’s true – architecture has a serious editorial demand. Good architecture has few things you could remove and still have a good building.
The act of architecture for me is the inverse Marilyn Monroe, and this aquatics center was a perfect example. I picked one thing, just one – and really went to bat for that one idea. On Carbondale Aquatics that was the glass brick façade. And the way I call it a “façade” is downplaying some complexity. It’s so much more than that – it’s a whole thing. Art and structure were married here. We did mockups, we had a light strip built into an air gap. I mean, it was more like a two-year vision quest than a “thing”, but that was the “thing” on this one. That was where we lost ourselves to devotion. That’s where this architecture studio, for a minute, set aside crickets and potato sticks, and bugs in the dusk. That brick wall. It’s new. It was ideated and executed for this project in this town. It’s the one thing. I hope it was worth it. I really think it is. It’s just hard for me to reconcile the ego required for that kind of art with the love I have for spaces that speak to people. Speak to children, especially.
I am sold on the idea of an outdoor public pool. I am so incredibly proud to be the designer of a space that will live in the imagination, in someone’s imagination, in this way – and I took that obligation and power very seriously. This is the project. My kids call it “mommy’s pool” because maybe it’s the only project of mine that they really know about and understand. And that’s no accident. Even a child just gets it. Maybe that forced me to see the essentials here. Make it work. Make it fun.
I hope this pool makes memories for you and your friends and family. Cheers, Carbondale.
