A lo-fi urban country club

The only thing cooler than a pool party on a summer night in New York City is a secret pool party.

On a rented lot that’s hidden from the street they have erected what they call a lo-fi urban country club: three connected pools housed in Dumpsters; a bocce court; some lounge chairs, grills and cabanas. On Saturday night just three dozen people got the nod to check it out, at an after party for the art journal Cabinet. “Please don’t forward,” the invitation read.

“It’s amazing,” the artist Nina Katchadourian said after taking a dip in the moonlight. “It makes you wonder, as so many things in New York do, what’s behind every wall that you can’t see past.”

Bobbing in the water on a pool toy was “the last thing I expected to be doing tonight,” added Aaron Levy, a curator visiting from Philadelphia.

What makes it so cool?

While the project is conceptually simple — get a bunch of trash containers, clean and seal them, fill with water, jump in — there were a lot of details to finesse. The coarse edges inside the containers were filed down, and underneath the liners, the bottoms were covered in sand, for soft landings. Tightly packed sandbags double as benches along the walls, and pool toys and kid-friendliness provide an intentional counterpoint to the neighborhood grit.

I don’t talk a lot about urban development on this weblog but I was intrigued by this article and the idea of creating low cost urban retreats.  With the decline in major American cities and entire neighborhoods being abandoned in places like Detroit, there are going to be a lot of opportunities for creative reuses in urban centers.  While I doubt that we will see secret urban party spots popping up all of the time, it’s going to be great when we do. via