The Springboard in the Pond is a bracing intellectual plunge A searching exploration of manners morals and darker truths in cultural and architectural history it is both insightfully serious and wildly funny Thomas S Hines Los Angeles Times

R ichly written and generously illustrated van Leeuwen succeeds in showing us the depths beneath the tinest ripples of history Phil Patton Civilization In The Springboard in the Pond Thomas van Leeuwen looks at the domestic swimming pool and discovers an icon indispensable to the reading of twentieth century modernism At one level the book is a rereading of modern architecture that will leave that story permanently altered At another level it is the story of the origin and evolution of the private swimming pool as a building type and cultural artifact And at still another level it is a material philosophy of water

This book is the second in a planned tetralogy by the author with each volume centered on the relationship of architecture to one of the four classical elements sky water fire and earth The first volume was The Skyward Trend of Thought The Metaphysics of the American Skyscraper MIT Press 1988 The third volume Columns of Fire Architecture and Destruction is currently in preparation