Seine Open-Air Swimming Site

The Grenelle Seine swimming site offered a unique opportunity to take part in a historic project for Parisians, while reaffirming the role of architects, even in highly technical undertakings.

The entire site was installed on the footprint of a former car park and was designed not to disturb the neighbouring residential barges, with which it shares the entire water infrastructure. But above all, the challenge was to invite the public to take a gesture that is as simple as it is intimidating: to dive into the Seine.

First, recreating a sense of normality by placing the site within a familiar cultural context. This guided the design of the yellow handrails and metalwork, inspired by the Art Deco forms and patterns of the 1920s, when Paris's first public swimming pools were celebrated architectural achievements.

Thanks to its projection into the Seine, the site creates a new and unique perspective from the river. 

This respectful dialogue between architecture and the larger landscape convinced the City of Paris to grant us rare formal and chromatic freedom, far more ambitious than what the original brief had anticipated.

Second, integrating from the outset the features needed to physically reassure the body.

At the end of the swim route, open-air showers, light and breezy, extended the feeling of freshness. Third, sparking the imagination with an island. Dive in, swim across, reach the island—what could be more instinctive and magnetic?

Building this floating platform came with serious technical and regulatory challenges. Yet the sight of swimmers climbing onto it with smiles on their faces confirms that this seemingly modest structure is, in fact, a central element of the project.

Bathing here is both an innovative and complex object. And yet, it is architecture that lies at the heart of the project, while the technical and engineering aspects are simply means to an end, not ends in themselves. That said, the design required advanced expertise to address the constantly shifting levels of the Seine.

Stability studies enabled the design of a buoyancy system capable of supporting up to 300 people at once, with no risk of deformation. On both land and water, the site was designed to be fully dismantlable within 48 hours in case of a flash flood.

In normal operation, every piece is numbered and placed with precision, like a giant Meccano set, allowing the installation to be disassembled and reassembled swiftly, year after year.

Finally, the project reflects a minimal environmental footprint, both through the use of repurposed shipping containers that have already travelled the world several times, and through the use of robinia wood, the only European hardwood naturally resistant to moisture without chemical treatment.