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Object Timeline

  • We acquired this object.

2009

  • Work on this object began.

2015

2025

  • You found it!

Worthing Swimming Pool

This is a Worthing Swimming Pool. It was designed by Heatherwick Studio and Thomas Heatherwick and made for (as the client) Worthing Borough Council. It is dated 2009.

How can you give a building a specific relationship to its site?
This competition design for a swimming pool in Worthing, on England’s south coast, was inspired by the 2008 capsizing of the vessel Ice Prince. The town of Worthing made international news with the powerful images of masses of timber and cargo that washed up on its beach. Thinking about the raw quality of this wreckage, the studio decided to make a building that looked like a burst-apart wood pallet, on a dramatic scale. Simple on the inside, the structure is dynamic on the outside, with its disordered external elements forming its cross-bracing.

It is credited Courtesy of Heatherwick Studio.

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio.

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If you would like to cite this object in a Wikipedia article please use the following template:

<ref name=CH>{{cite web |url=https://www-4.collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/85006445/ |title=Worthing Swimming Pool |author=Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |accessdate=5 February 2025 |publisher=Smithsonian Institution}}</ref>