Malvern Pool House, by British studios Klas Hyllen Architecture and Malishev Engineers, is a quiet expression of brick, light and water - an escape from the elements in rural Warwickshire, England.

The project is a visually stunning companion to an Arts & Crafts inspired home, perched on a hilltop, housing a swimming pool and relaxation rooms. The building is a sensory oasis of light and water and an exquisite retreat from the world. Sweeping views across the Malvern Hills are balanced with a light-filled volume with a cathedral-like diagrid ceiling that appears to float above the pool. This building invites you to relax and rejuvenate, taking in the delights of the surrounding countryside, where deer, geese, and hares inhabit the fields stretching out before you.

The project comprises two interconnected volumes of clay brick, minimal in appearance, yet materially rich and exquisitely detailed.
The primary, oblong shaped volume (63m2) is all about the elements and is angled specifically to retain a dialogue with the landscape. It houses the 1.4m deep pool where the water extends to the perimeter walls and a vast south-facing window, to seamlessly flow into the view. The white-washed diagrid timber ceiling adds an effortless, calming, monastic quality.

A nine-metre-long skylight floods the space with more daylight, or on a clear night is spliced with starlight. A natural mineral scent, a result of the water’s interplay with the clay brick, fills the air.

The secondary volume (38m2) strengthens and shelters a rectilinear farm courtyard to the north, a space now defined thanks to the careful design of the new buildings. It is a simple mono-pitch volume, housing ancillary functions such as showers, changing rooms and a small separate meditation area, connected to the main house through a new timber fin glazed link.

The space defined between the two volumes (32m2) is the relaxation area, binding the spaces together. The secondary volume and relaxation area is deliberately darker, finished to charred timber to create a calm and introspective atmosphere.

Below the ancillary volume is a basement plant room and the overflow tank, as well as a wine cellar (68m2). Through the glazed link, back in the main house, an old snooker room has been re-purposed into a new games room and gym (58m2).

The challenge at Malvern Pool House is in the technical integration of services into a building where the water is entirely contained within the outer walls of the building itself – which several specialist pool contractors insisted couldn’t be done, promoting the more ‘standard’ installation of a pool within a pool with service voids below.

It is thanks to the collaboration between the design team, the site manager and the no-compromise attitude of the client, that the vision of an oblong shaped volume being all water was achieved.

Visually Malvern Pool House is deceptively simple where all the complex technical elements are well hidden. What is not visible are any of the services which have been cleverly cast into accessible (and maintainable) voids under the water, while an ingenious ventilation system has been incorporated into the steel ring beam supporting the roof.

The space is a sensory experience and it is visually stunning, but the experience really comes to life in person – it is about all the senses, acoustics, temperature, tactility, and the smell of water on brick which gives off a very pleasant mineral, almost monastic scent. The air handling unit is the beating heart of this, ensuring a constant temperature at about 29 degrees and humidity at about 55%.

An indoor pool is energy greedy and humid in its very nature, and the approach to this has been to limit operational energy demand wherever possible. Malvern Pool House is a super insulated airtight structure (350mm of insulation to the roof, 300mm of insulation to the walls and 200mm to the ground) which dramatically reduces heat loss and energy use. This allows the air-handling system to operate as efficiently as possible, recycling the heat within the building to maintain constant temperatures and humidity levels.
Whilst the basement and pool structure is concrete, the remainder of the structure is predominantly a combination of masonry and timber, responding to a need for a structure that needed to be robust, and to withstand the humidity of the space for decades to come.