1.01.2009

Down Under

[Image: The subterranean granny flat of the future, via the Sydney Morning Herald].

According to an article published last month in the Sydney Morning Herald, turning backyard swimming pools into subterranean "granny flats" is a spatially innovative, if unexpected, way to assuage Sydney's growing housing shortage. Indeed, much of Sydney's projected population growth could simply be "housed within some of [New South Wales's] 360,000 swimming pools." These "redeveloped pools" could then be used as detached bedrooms for grandparents, teens, guests, bunker enthusiasts, underground-obsessed schizophrenics, and so on.
The regions 360,000 swimming pools would first be emptied of their water and then transformed, through architectural intervention, into a comfortable domestic space, "complete with a small bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, garden alcove and rooftop windows."
But where would everyone then swim? In the ocean pools of Sydney, of course.

From bldgblog