Winning Pool Designers Swimming in Praise

My first aerial view of the Orange County/Long Beach coastal plain came from the pilot’s seat of a Piper Cherokee, where I was doing everything possible to make myself airsick.

It was my first time at the controls of an airplane, it was a hot day, and I was lurchingly overcompensating for the rising thermals. My instructor told me to quit working the yoke like a galley oar, mind the altimeter, relax and enjoy the scenery. I shook my shoulders, loosened my death grip, banked left and peered down. What I saw nearly made me forget my souring stomach.

The earth below was dotted with dozens and dozens of turquoise jelly beans.

They were beautiful and, from 2,000 feet, distinct as gems on a dark carpet. They were back-yard swimming pools, every single one of them shaped like a kidney, all with a little notch in one end: a diving board.

That was in 1968, when the idea of a built-in back-yard swimming pool was still a bit of a novelty. Individual pools weren’t terribly singular, because simply having the pool conferred distinction. Decking was concrete, coping was smooth, curved, volcanic-looking artificial rock, and if you really wanted to dress it up, you put in a slide. Anything else was simply gilding the lily. Heck, you had a pool. You’d hit the big time at last.

But the Joneses, of course, never rest. Accessories began to appear. There were fountains, waterfalls, attached whirlpools and koi ponds. Pools began to look less like kidneys and more like Rorschach blots. People would show up at contractors’ offices with old Star Trek stills and Dr. Seuss books and say, “Make it look like that! “

Fortunately, the pool industry--locally, at least--seems to have found its level. The unadorned, unmodified kidney-shaped pool may be anachronistic, but so, apparently, are the occasional aberrations from the Cubist and the Dada schools.

One local arbiter of aqua-taste is the Orange County chapter of the National Spa and Pool Institute, which holds a yearly design awards contest for pool and spa builders. Entries are submitted in several design categories and awards are presented at a banquet, which this year was held Friday.

The winners ranged from monsters that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Hearst Castle to cozy little hideaways that Bambi would feel comfortable drinking from. Their common characteristic: They ain’t your father’s swimming pools.

Take the fourth residential pool category, the one honoring “any residential swimming pool of unique design.” The bronze medal winner, built by Curcie Pools of Anaheim, was described this way: “Free-form pool with multiple elevations and sculptured rock waterfall. Creative combinations of masonry materials, including Bouquet Canyon stone, sculptured concrete rocks, Endicot brick and gray-tint concrete decking help blend the pool into the natural setting. Retaining walls and various elevations enlarged the entertainment area.”

The silver medalist in the same category, a small pool by Mission Pools of Mission Viejo, built near the courtyard entrance way of a house: “This pool, spa (and) fountain was built to accommodate limited space and enhance the front entrance of this upscale residence. Features include brick coping, gray plaster, 10 therapy jets, tiled spillway and 10 separate fountain jets.” Not to mention a pair of plaster cherubs guarding the spa.

The gold medal winner, by Swan Pools of El Toro, was a “rockscape pool, featuring a waterfall, raised deck with pool access, bridge and hidden grotto. All functions are fully automated.” And an attached spa, of course.

You get the idea. Imagine defense contractors getting out of the high-tech blowing-up-the-world dodge and into the pool business and you won’t be far off the mark. And the winners in the spa category encompassing “unique installation or use of natural setting or unusual layout” were just as spectacular, if smaller.

Take the bronze medalist, by Swimrite Pools of Huntington Beach: “Glass block fountain behind a spa that spills into the spa. Two underwater . . . lights light up the fountain.”

The silver medal winner, from Mission Pools: “A large spa featuring 12 jets, a raised water feature and ‘floating’ stepping stones of exposed aggregate. The coping and columns are brick and the interior is finished in gray plaster.” What they don’t mention is the size. This thing takes up 292 square feet, enough for the entire Raiders defense, or about 400 normal people.

Coast Pools of Dana Point assembled the gold medal winner, a spa with “all natural rock decor, gunite spa with 14 jets and a stand-up section. Simulated rock finish and texture over gunite.” This one is the flip side of the silver medal winner: secluded, intimate, almost out of J.R.R. Tolkien. The kind of spa you don’t want to get out of until you turn into a prune, and maybe not even then.

To the winners, congrats. And to the lucky owners of the winning entries: pool party weather is on the way, and I always keep a bathing suit in the car.