[Image: The subterranean granny flat of the future, via the Sydney Morning Herald].
According to an article published last month in the Sydney Morning Herald, turning backyard swimming pools into subterranean "granny flats" is a spatially innovative, if unexpected, way to assuage Sydney's growing housing shortage. Indeed, much of Sydney's projected population growth could simply be "housed within some of [New South Wales's] 360,000 swimming pools." These "redeveloped pools" could then be used as detached bedrooms for grandparents, teens, guests, bunker enthusiasts, underground-obsessed schizophrenics, and so on.
The region's 360,000 swimming pools would first be emptied of their water and then transformed, through architectural intervention, into a comfortable domestic space, "complete with a small bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, garden alcove and rooftop windows."
But where would everyone then swim? In the ocean pools of Sydney, of course.
(Thanks to Simon Sellars for the tip!)
This piece originally appeared on Geoff Manaugh's site, BLDGBLOG
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Great year-round constant temperature too... Though that might be more attractive in the blazing hot outback than in coastal Sydney.
Posted by: Zane Selvans on 11 Dec 08
So, you're several metres below the ground, and the only way to get out unassisted is via a flight of stairs.
That makes rather a cruel joke of the name “granny flat”, no?
Posted by: Ben Finney on 11 Dec 08
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