Swimming Pool in Saint Gilles Croix de Vie / Brochet Lajus Pueyo Architects


© Jean-François Tremege

© Jean-François Tremege
  • Architects: Brochet Lajus Pueyo Architects
  • Location: ZAC du Gâtineau-4, Rue du Guillon, 85270 Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez, France
  • Lead Architects: Brochet Lajus Pueyo
  • Architects In Charge: Paul-Louis Imbaud , Raphaël Masnada
  • Associate Architect: DGA Architectes & associés
  • Area: 3290.0 m2
  • Project Year: 2017
  • Photographs: Jean-François Tremege
  • Landscape: LET’S GROW
  • Structural Engineer: Khephren Ingienerie, CESMA
  • Cost Estimator : OVERDRIVE
  • Mechanical Electrical Plumbing Engineer: ETHIS
  • Acoustics : IDB
  • Roads And Various Networks: Alto Step
  • Graphist: PEKAK
  • Client : Communauté de Communes du Pays de Saint Gilles Croix de Vie
  • Cost: 11 086 000 euros

© Jean-François Tremege

© Jean-François Tremege

Text description provided by the architects. The project is located in the middle of a remarkable “Natura 2000” natural unit with which it enters in harmony. By a view-point effect, the main hall, light and elegant, offers a panoramic sight of the landscape. From a distance, only the main hall emerges above the salt pans and the waterway named La Vie.


© Jean-François Tremege

© Jean-François Tremege

The roof is expressed in three “petals”, floating above ground; the reasoned form of the structure evokes the movement of water, the undulations of a line-manta moving. The abstract character of this roof in levitation above landscape is allowed by a structure in peripheral lattice, which surrounds the surface of the swimming-pool and supports the roof in an interdependent structural unit.


© Jean-François Tremege

© Jean-François Tremege

To allow the swimming-pool’s main hall to emerge, like the main project’s image, whole of the cloakrooms and technical premises are contained in a building adjoining the main hall that proceeds of a radically different logic.  The cloakrooms are integrated in a concrete building which mineral brutal aspect melts in the landscape.


Ground floor plan

Ground floor plan

The technical premises benefits from the natural topography of the ground to be embedded there. The facade’s lattice filters the light and the sights and create reflections in the landscape. The curved surface of the interior roof treats both the pools’ acoustics and luminous environment. The white metal structure, the clear grounds, the clear cement walls and the wood cladding, harmonizes with the surroundings vegetal universe.


© Jean-François Tremege

© Jean-François Tremege

The swimming-pool’s main hall, like a timeless shelter, designed in observation of the natural forms, enters in harmony with its environment.


Water slide level

Water slide level

The building is especially outstanding thanks to its glazed wide spaces, with different heights, allowing to reach up to 11 meters. The roofs’ offsets allows a direct daylight incoming in the middle of the swimming-pool’s main hall. The roof’s overflows takes part in the glazings’ solar protection for a good comfort during summer. Glass lays out a particular treatment in order to bring light while minimizing reverberation and maximizing transparency on the swimming-pool.


© Jean-François Tremege

© Jean-François Tremege

 The structure of the main hall is very specific: located above beams, the ceiling is surfaced with 1400 micro-perforated triangles which model the roof’s curves. It is a visible structure with a system of nonapparent fasteners.


© Jean-François Tremege

© Jean-François Tremege

The metal lattice makes it possible to avoid posts within the pool’s hall. The white structure is voluntarily visible, as a ship’s hull. The row provision of the basins allows to offer to the swimming-pool’s users the best orientations for the sunning, and the nicest views on the site.


© Jean-François Tremege

© Jean-François Tremege

An architecture of nature to serve a serene and dynamic environment. It is the identity which the territory’s remarkable landscape inspires to us. We restore it by our architectural work.


© Jean-François Tremege

© Jean-François Tremege