Wanted: Good Ideas
Snow had freshly blanketed the city’s streets for the first time in two years when the Center for Architecture convened a public discussion about pools. Hardly the ideal confluence of weather conditions and subject matter. Unless, of course, you’re Robert Hammond, a cofounder of the Friends of the High Line, the nonprofit that galvanized the creation of the mostly annoying elevated park. As president of Therme Group’s US division, he hopes to bring for-profit thermae and balneae to urban centers across the country, from “global gateways” like New York to “lifestyle cities” like Nashville (his words). But for the moment, none exist stateside.
Hammond was merely the most talkative panelist in an event that was, in fact, pegged to the release of Chris Romer-Lee’s new monograph, Sea Pools: 66 Saltwater Sanctuaries from Around the World (Batsford). The London-based architect spoke of the British fondness for lidos, which are built into shores in and around villages and filled with sea overflow. “I like to think of them like the pub, or the park, just a place to meet up,” Romer-Lee said, evoking the kinship of small-town life. Hammond and Kara Meyer, managing director of + POOL, nodded along, but a certain incompatibility of cultural sensibilities made itself obvious.
For a few beats, the conversation turned inexplicably to graphic identity. “Guiliani once said ‘the Highline is just two guys and a logo,’” Hammond said with a smirk. On the subject of + POOL, Meyer emphasized the tight link between the projected form of the self-filtering pool and its logo. “It’s fun, it’s playful, it’s positive—particularly now, when there’s all this hate going around,” she said, gesturing to the street two stories above the deep lecture hall. “Design matters. It changes the way people respond to things.” (It’s worth noting that for more than a decade, + POOL has existed as little more than a logo.)
Where Romer-Lee stressed the importance of proximity and easy access for the success of pools as public spaces—he seemed acutely perturbed by the case of a Scottish swimming facility built a ten minutes’ drive from the nearest town—Hammond tended toward the abstract. He mentioned that after the High Line first first opened people told him they never wanted to go there themselves “because it was so white, it was too white.” He trailed off, the implication being that the problem solved itself.
That sort of easy resolution would certainly be in line for an ideas guy. At one point, Hammond waved the room into himself, inviting anyone with a good idea for something New York needs to simply go for it—just like he did. It’s an unsettling truth, but Hammond is the proof: much of our most trivial urban features are enacted by random people with the confidence to argue for their absolute necessity and an ability to wrangle millions of our tax money to materialize them.
As the chat was wrapping up, Hammond posed a question to Meyer on behalf of the audience: “What do you need from us?” She looked sheepishly out at the room and said they would need more money—much more than the $16 million Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have pledged to + POOL. Even a donation of $25 or $50 would be appreciated. Every dollar counts.