Alvar Aalto, the Architect who inadvertently changed the history of Skateboarding.
What if we tell you that Pool Skateboarding is practiced thanks to a Finnish architect who lived during the first half of the last century?
The modernist architect is Alvar Aalto, who designed Villa Mairea in 1939, a residential country house in Noormarkku, in Finland, and included the first known "kidney"-shaped pool, and according to the magazine Transworld , this design was the original, and which was copied in the backyards of hundreds of homes throughout the US and especially in California.
It is important to note that what is significant is the rounded floor, with a change in depth that is formed with a large Bowl, which would be the attraction that would make the kids storm the backyards to skate in endless sessions during the drought that took place in 1975. .
Transworld Skateboarding broke onto the property to skate the pool for the first time after reading the Finnish newspaper article Helsinging Sanomat , and published photos of the sessions in its September 2016 issue.
"It may be the pool that changed the history of skateboarding," noted the Finnish newspaper. Before the construction of the pool at Villa Mairea, all pools were traditionally rectangular, while this one is completely devoid of angles.”
The newspaper directly connects the pool at Villa Mairea with the pool at Donell Garden in Sonoma, California. The garden of this house was designed by the architect Thomas Church, for the house of Dewey and Jean Donell. The garden of this house soon became famous at the time, due to the unusual shapes used, including a kidney-shaped pool.
Thomas Church was a personal friend of Alvar Aalto, they met on one of the Finnish architect's visits to the US, and he was tremendously influenced by his work. Leaving angles aside and applying more rounded shapes in their projects.
The Helsing Sanomat newspaper contacted the Finnish Skatepark designer Jane Saario who has studied the design of both pools and says "It is practically a direct copy"
The pool at the Donell house began to be copied in thousands of California homes as a symbol of the "Good Life."
During the summer of 1975, many of these pools were emptied to preserve the water, making them the perfect terrain for Skateboarders to find the long-awaited wave of cement so desired by Skaters of the time, strongly influenced by Surfing. The tricks that were performed in those pools are still practiced today, and also in skateparks, whose constructions are still based on the pool model created by Alvar Aalto.
The Villa Mairea house was commissioned from Alvar Aalto by art patrons Marie and Harry Gullichsen, who instructed him to treat the project as an opportunity to experiment.
In this project, Alvar Aalto strayed a bit from the rules of modernism, delving deeper into the more organic and rounded shapes, typical of Art Noveau.
Alvar Alto died in 1976, at the age of 78, and is recognized as one of the greatest Finnish architects, and perhaps from now on as one of those responsible for the existence of Pool Skateboarding.
By Alexandre Valero
Based on the texts by Anna Winston
Pictures of Transworld Skateboarding