LAPS OF LUXURY

NO one will ever splash around in Steven James’ pool, and that’s just fine with him. What he likes is the way his compact $400,000 waterscape dresses up the view. It’s shaped like a pentagon, with two sides spilling water -- or so it seems -- into the Newport Beach golf course below.

“I don’t like swimming,” says James from the sunny ledge of his backyard. “You get wet.”

Whether for getting wet or not, the swimming pool has always exerted a powerful hold upon the imagination. From the time of Roman emperor Trajan to the present, homeowners have obsessed over its seductions, and that obsession is most evident in Southern California, where pools are not just dug, they are worshiped.

Here, in our own backyard, is perhaps the highest density of private watering places in the world. Back in the early days, 1962, it was estimated that of more than 310,000 swimming pools in the United States, one-third were in California. Their popularity has never waned.

Today homeowners have moved well beyond the simple requirement of a hole in the ground. Instead, they crave Las Vegas-style amusements: remote-controlled flames, sound-activated dancing lights and the illusion of endless water. They want custom tile and real stone, architectural lines that match the house, and artwork and antiques near the waterline.

As with most objects in our material world, pools reflect who we are and who we want to be. Accordingly, designs have gone over the top.

In one Del Mar home, water overflows the rim of a pool on top of a carport and drops into a reservoir 10 feet below. In Venice, a homeowner is building a pool with a see-through bottom on top of his three-story house just so he can feel the sun filtering through it like a giant skylight.

And then there’s James’ pool. Two years of construction and more than 100 subcontractors helped ensure that the details were attended to, inch by inch. Oversized squares of travertine that cover the floors inside his house continue seamlessly through the backyard to the thin lip of the pool.

The crowning touch? Plaster coloring on the bottom of the pool in a shade of blue that perfectly matches the vivid hue of the Bombay Sapphire Gin bottle. James and his wife, Rusty, simply like the color. Sybarites never had it so sweet, and even though the couple never plan to jump in, wild ducks do.

“My friends joke that I have built a very expensive duck pond,” says the furniture store owner.

“WHY do people swim?”

It’s a simple question that architectural historian Thomas A.P. Van Leeuwen asks in his playful study, “The Springboard in the Pond: An Intimate History of the Swimming Pool.” In finding his answer, he divides humanity into three types: the frog, who lives in water; the swan, who lives on water; and the penguin, who lives next to water.

Among such a menagerie, Mel Blumenthal is most certainly a swan.

The Pacific Ocean, a few steps away from his home on the Balboa Peninsula, wasn’t enough for Blumenthal. So fixated on water is this attorney and art connoisseur that he added to his weekend getaway a serpentine pool that coils from the entrance to the back gate, a 14-foot-long aquarium, an oversized spa, and koi ponds with mini Old Faithful-like fountains and five arcing water jets.

The engineering of such an enterprise was staggering. Because all of these additions sit so close to the shore and some of them are subterranean, the contractor had to design essentially a bathtub for the structures to sit in. The pumps, heaters and filters that support this modern Waterworld are stored in four narrow vaults packed so densely with meters and control knobs that they look like engine rooms in a submarine. When everything is cranked up -- fountains burbling, jets spraying, filters filtering -- giant red and green saucers by artist Brad Howe, mounted on the water wall, are nearly lost in the commotion. Of course it doesn’t help that the sculpture is situated so close to a $100,000 saltwater aquarium filled with lionfish and sandwiched between the pool and the basement game room.

Back home in Santa Monica, the Blumenthals’ main residence is nearly as waterlogged. The pool here has none of the fantasy-park features, but its cool allure fits the formal architecture. The black bottom makes the water look like glass. With no coping or edges, the water flows seamlessly onto the stone deck and reflects a large sculpture by Guy Dill with arcs and bands of marble.

“It’s a complicated engineering process to have the water stay level,” Blumenthal says of his perimeter overflow pool. “But at night, when the lights are focused on it, the sculpture looks as if it’s floating on the water. The art piece drove the design and position of the pool.”

Matt Parsons, on the other hand, is a penguin, and his children are frogs.

The signature element of Parsons’ ambitious waterscape is a 2-ton, 16th century bronze cannon, pulled from a shipwreck and craned into place on a grassy slice of his Newport Coast home.

Three connecting lagoons stretch out 57 feet -- and are surrounded by river rock, making his yard look as if it were spliced from the Kern River. On the outside edges, water slips over the tawny stones, leaving them perpetually glistening. In the deepest pool, stone walls descend 11 feet to the bottom. On the top, there are manhole-sized stone disks to step across. Behind it all is a view of the Santa Ana Mountains.

As in nature, here there are no straight lines but whorls of water. One end of a pool reaches a sandy shore, where Parsons’ two sons play beneath a palm tree growing in sand shipped in from Hawaii.

“Regular playground sand looks like kitty litter when it gets wet,” says Parsons, who owns a medical supply company. The sand here is the same as that at the Hilton Waikoloa Village on the Kohala Coast of Hawaii’s Big Island, where the Parsons family vacations every year. “This is big, coral-like sand that dries out fast. If the boys throw it into the pool, the pool man doesn’t like it, but it cleans up really easy and dries out fast.”

Randy Beard, who built the Parsonses’ $600,000 pool, shrugs off the idea that any of this is excessive.

“With all of my clients, a pool is their own piece of art,” says Beard, co-owner of Pure Water Pools in Costa Mesa. “They consider it as carefully as they do their furniture, their car and the art on their walls. Most of my clients are original thinkers, and they are not going to accept an ordinary pool. They want to know what the neighbors are doing and do one better.”

Among Beard’s more recent projects is a pool that one enters by jumping off a rope slung from a 28-foot-high fake tree, and, of course, there are also “spools,” oversized spas with Versailles-like water arcs.

EROS, argues Van Leeuwen, is often at the heart of any swimming pool obsession. Hollywood movies celebrate it, and homeowners capitalize on it.

Steve and Maureen Duff’s pool is all about mood -- and at the flip of a switch. At night, fiber-optic lights change the water to a romantic green, illuminating the raised patio that is surrounded by the water. Soft music pours out of rock speakers. A lava fire bowl from Indonesia sends waves of warm air around a cozy sectional sofa.

The Duffs bought their house six years ago in Carlsbad and thought that with toddler triplets, a grassy yard was the safest way to landscape. But last year, they decided a pool could keep their daughter and two sons entertained while also adding a much-needed design element to their property.

But they didn’t want a kids’ fantasy pool -- with rock slides or basketball hoops. Instead, theirs would have the same minimalist style as their contemporary house. Coppery custom glass tiles shimmer at the waterline.

“When you get into a project like this,” says Duff, a pharmaceutical consultant, “you start throwing money around as if it’s not real. A piece of lava for a fountain or fire pit can be $1,500, which is not an insignificant amount, but when you’re talking about a project that goes well beyond $100,000, you start saying, ‘I’ll take one of these.’ You don’t want to skimp on creating an atmosphere.”

Creating such an atmosphere is a triumph in the face of historian Van Leeuwen’s less happy conclusion. Published in 1999, “The Springboard in the Pond” charts a diminished affection for the swimming pool, as evidenced by the demise of diving boards and slides and other forms of playful recreation. Clearly, though, seven years later, our obsession with pools has reemerged. We may be swans or penguins on the outside, but in our hearts, we’ll always be frogs.

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Janet Eastman can be reached at janet.eastman@latimes.com.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Make a splash with extras

Take control: An in-home system such as Jandy’s AquaLink, available through pool builders, can control the pool and spa temperature, water and light features, and pool cleaner ([707] 776-8200; www.jandy.com). The unit can also be activated by a cellphone call, heating up the spa during your commute home.

Salt water, anyone? Top pool designers usually install generators that use table salt to keep a pool clean instead of chlorine. Several manufacturers such as AutoPilot ([800] 922-6246; www.autopilot.com) have easy-to-install “salt water” systems that start at about $1,000.

Skewers by the pool: One of the most requested pool accessories is a nearby barbecue center with rotisserie grill, sink and keg dispenser. For ideas, visit National Pool Tile Group (www.nptgonline.com) or Home Depot ([800] 553-3199; www.homedepot.com).

Light the way: Fiberstars ([800] 327-7877; www.fiberstars.com) and Super Vision International ([407] 855-5630; www.svision.com) make systems that send lighted arcs of water anywhere you want them to go, starting at around $650.

A spritz of mist: Nozzles recessed into the deck, such as ones made by Fogco Systems Inc. ([480] 507-6478; www.fogco.com), can create a cooling layer of mist around the pool.

Dazzlers: Splash Dance is a sound-activated water display with a single- or triple-pump fountain ([800] 225-1339; www.calpump.com).

Gaming: Remote-controlled submarines, such as the one from Swimline by International Leisure Products ([631] 254-2155; www.swimline.com), dive under the water and beam a search light. Companies such as California Pools ([800] 282-7665; www.californiapools.com) can install basketball anchors and hoops, available at pool supply stores.

Shady effects: A pool plasterer (National Plasterers Council, [866] 483-4672; www.npconline.org) can drill a stanchion into a ledge or step to hold an umbrella. Or patio stores sell free-standing cantilever umbrellas with posts that bend to shade the water.

Fire: You have earth, sky and water -- add fire with an $80 terra-cotta chiminea, $13 battery-operated bamboo tiki torch or candles at Lowe’s ([800] 445-6937; www.lowes.com) and other home stores.

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-- Janet Eastman