BathingCulture
Iceland’s municipal swimming pools have no customers, only guests – locals and visitors, people of all ages, backgrounds and body types, with different postures and perspectives on life. The most important public good in Iceland is the hot water bubbling out of the ground. Our most interesting public spaces are our pools. It is here that friends and strangers meet, here that society reveals itself – in swimsuits.
Pool culture in Iceland is about quality of life and public health; it’s about sports, play and relaxation; about body culture, civilization and community. Bodies o f various shapes and sizes float together in the pools, and everyday life stands stark naked in the public shower rooms, no filters. The pool public has made its mark on the pools over the years and turned them into gyms, schoolrooms, community centers, playgrounds and spas.
Many design fields join forces in the public pools. Their development over a century is the results of an ongoing conversation between architects and society about form and function. Graphic design, product design, clothing design and experience design are all at play in the pools. The public pools are an exquisite example of social design: they have sculpted the community, culture and bodies of Icelanders for over a century. Social design is about creating wellbeing and enhancing people’s lives rather than creating merchandise.
The exhibition spans a period from the beginnings of pool culture at the dawn of the 20th century to its present dynamics in the 21st. The story of Iceland’s public pools doubles as a warm history of modern society with a hint of chlorine and sulfur, rising steam and the faint sound of splashing.
Curators: Valdimar T. Hafstein, þjóðfræðingur og Brynhildur Pálsdóttir, hönnuður.
Graphic design: Ármann Agnarsson og Helgi Páll.
Co curator: Sigríður Sigurjónsdóttir
The exhibiiton is a collaboration with The University of Icealnd. It is based on the research of Arnar
D. Jónssonar, Ólafs Rastrick og Valdimars Tr. Hafstein as well as the researh of the ethnologists
Katrín D. Guðmundsdóttir, Katrín Snorradóttir, Ólafur Ingibergsson og Sigurlaug
Dagsdóttir.
