What do you do with a pool in the dessert? (Are you listening Las Vegas?) Leisure space is a premium, and I had no yard. I had a big ugly hole. What I needed was a design that optimally balanced living space and locally-appropriate purpose. I decided to build a survival bunker.One of my favorite local swimming pool remodels can be credited to my friend David. His house had a concrete bottom pool that he promptly filled in with dirt to make a nice garden. He and his wife grow much of their own food now.
I love that idea. They took an utter waste of a scarce local resource, and turned it into vital sustenance. Had my pool not entirely dominated the landscape of our back yard, I may have ended up with a garden myself. But I had two key differences to consider: 1. our yard was terraced, 2. the pool had a sand bottom, making it easier to remove. In the end, my yard became a remodel, a reconfiguration, and re-contextualization of its original form. The "pool" would go, but the water would remain. I would "fill" the space with a void, and use that space to store an emergency cache of water and life-sustaining supplies. The yard would remain terraced, but clever design would serve to mask the existence the much deeper hidden cavity in its center.
