Alvar Aalto's Dream

Alvar Aalto was a legendary architect who left a lasting mark on both Finnish and global architecture. His library in Vyborg is ranked among the top 10 cultural heritage sites in the world, and his wooden chairs are still seen as the gold standard of comfort and style.

In 1939, at the Mairea villa in the Finnish town of Noormarkku, Aalto designed the world’s first kidney-shaped swimming pool—a bold move that broke all the design norms of the time, as pools had traditionally been rectangular. What made this pool unique was its rounded bottom and gradually changing depth, creating a "bowl" effect at the deep end. Beyond aesthetics, the design also had a practical advantage: the curved shape allowed for even water pressure distribution, making it particularly well-suited for colder climates.

Nine years later, in 1948, a private estate for the Donnell family was completed in the United States. The project was led by landscape architect Thomas Church, a longtime acquaintance of Aalto. Deeply inspired by Aalto’s work during a visit to Finland, Church gradually moved away from sharp angles in his designs and brought the concept of a curved pool to the American landscape.

This made the Donnell Estate the first known example of a kidney-shaped pool on the West Coast. Soon after, these pools started popping up in the backyards of affluent Americans, quickly becoming a backyard staple and a symbol of the good life.

In 1973, California was hit by a drought (best illustrated in Catherine Hardwicke’s cult film *Lords of Dogtown* starring Heath Ledger), which lasted for three years. Swimming pools dried up, the wind stopped pushing waves onto the beaches, and countless surfers found themselves stranded without their usual thrill.

They began searching for a way to recreate the feeling of riding a closing wave—this time on land.

Someone attached wheels to a board and started carving down long, winding asphalt roads in the hills, essentially inventing the longboard. But that wasn’t enough. Pushing the limits further, thrill-seekers modified their boards to be smaller and began sneaking into the drained backyard pools of the wealthy, finally rediscovering the speed and adrenaline rush of wave riding.

And just like that, skateboarding as a mass phenomenon was born.

In the spring of 2021, the architectural bureau XSA created a unique project in Krasnodar, Russia—a skate pool (also known as a "bowl") based on Alvar Aalto’s original blueprints from the famous library in Vyborg. This pool shape essentially became the birthplace of the entire skateboarding world. Thanks to its innovative design, skateboarding found its form, gained a following, and truly took off.

The challenge was to create a structure that wasn’t just a place to ride but also a significant piece of architecture—a hub for urban culture, where its form could be both admired and actively used.

The bowl was built in a very short time—about two months from laying the foundation to the first test ride.

The design and construction team at XSA armed themselves with a range of 3D modeling and design software—from AutoCAD and Rhino to 3Ds Max. In the end, all the wooden components were precision-cut on our CNC machines, and our craftsmen assembled this masterpiece by hand.

By building this bowl, we became the first in Russia to pioneer at least two key technologies. The first was integrating a concrete coping (the pool’s edge) into a wooden bowl. The second was an open-frame structure. Traditionally, pools like this are dug into the ground, meaning the bowl is simply set into an excavated space. Instead, we elevated it above the surface, showcasing both its technical sophistication and aesthetic beauty—inside and out.

The open-frame design reveals the skeleton of the bowl—its smooth curves, precise calculations, and meticulously crafted details. Typically, frames are covered up since they’re considered "behind the scenes" and don’t need to be aesthetically pleasing. But we wanted it to be striking both inside and out.

Another unique feature of this structure is the absence of a traditional supporting frame. Instead, the entire load is distributed across twelve 72mm-diameter metal columns. This approach helped visually lighten the bowl’s perimeter, making the design feel more open and seamless.

We used a system of counterforts and a three-layer sandwich plywood technique on the pool walls, which helped evenly distribute the load across the entire structure.

For the transition areas where the curved walls meet the flat bottom—the coping, where sliding tricks are performed—we decided to cast it in concrete. The concrete coping gives the sliding surface extra strength and durability. And so we created a seamless mix of three materials: wood, concrete, and metal.

The real test of the bowl came during its grand opening, when more than 200 skateboarders and spectators filled the space at once. By rough estimates, the total load exceeded 13 tons—and our skate pool handled it effortlessly.