Original subtitles

We've really been the talk of the world.

Narrator: Ever wonder what your neighbor's pool really looks like

but just can't see past the fence?

This sort of black circle of water

literally in the treetops was an exciting idea.

Narrator: Well, don't worry.

We've done all the dirty work for you.

A conventional pool was not gonna work.

And what you will see is going to blow your mind.

He said, "I want to swim with the fishes."

oh-ho!

Junaid: This has probably never been done.

It's a high-class living.

Narrator: So, bust out that lounge chair and soak it all in,

because we're showing you

the most epic pools around the country.

The only question is,

which one will leave you saying "best pool ever"?

It's floating in midair.

Narrator: These pools are feats of engineering, tests of nature,

and meant to push the limits.

These are the best out-of-the-box pools.

[ water bubbling ]

this pool in northern california

is far from your average swimming pool,

with a focus on creating

the most natural environment possible.

Our backyard mixes a lot of our loves together.

We are really focused on sustainability.

My wife loves to garden, so we have a vegetable garden.

We have a tent in the backyard for camping out.

But the best part is the all-natural swimming pool.

I actually thought about building a pond

with, like, a clay bottom.

That was pretty impractical.

Narrator: So tony and his wife set out to build

one of the most natural-looking

and environmentally friendly pools of its kind.

Tony: When you walk into the backyard,

the first thing you notice is the pool and the rockwork.

Then you start to focus in on the plants,

you start to hear the waterfalls,

and you kind of quickly find a sense of peace

by being in the backyard.

♪♪

he said, "I want to swim with the fishes,"

as the mafia would say.

♪♪

that's a really unique thing.

We actually hired on a biological consultant

from oregon who builds lakes in nature

to come and help us set up the biology here.

♪♪

we worked together to come up with

a biological filtration system, which is very unique.

I had never done one like this before.

Natural swimming pools use a wetland for filtration,

so the water filters through plants and biota.

We had to re-create that in a trough that was under our deck.

So their spa is 100% clear, sparkling water

with no chemicals.

♪♪

the planning was about a year,

and the construction, a little over a year and three months.

To shape the pool, we wanted to have

a little more of a river look, and so not like a linear pool,

but something with just a slight bend to it.

The pool is done out of concrete.

Bringing rocks from all over the place with cranes

and putting them in positions

limits you and what you can actually create.

There is no plaster in this pool.

There is no tile.

It involves my artificial rockwork,

which we manufacture in my own factory.

It just looks real.

At the deep end, the pool is about 10 feet deep.

It's about 20 feet wide and about 45 feet long

as it stretches along the river.

There are seven waterfalls in the pool.

The waterfalls create a little bit of trickling noise.

♪♪

we also have diving rocks,

so you can jump off 6- or 7-foot cliffs into the pool.

Our hot tub is actually a standing-depth hot tub,

so you can actually stand shoulder-deep

with jets up your back.

I feel like I'm in a tropical grotto.

This hot tub is 104 degrees and perfect.

This is a pool that's full of surprises.

♪♪

we have a snuba set up,

which is an ability to breathe underwater.

You can actually explore.

You see fish, you see plants, you see life.

So it's really an experience.

The fish are the best part.

♪♪

I've probably shot over 30 pools underwater.

This pool is the one to do it in

compared to any other pool that I've been in.

It was fun. It's pretty cool down there.

[ splash ]

narrator: This next pool, in houston, texas,

is an engineering feat.

We're right in the middle of downtown,

and the client was very open to new ideas.

He was looking for it to be a signature building in town,

something that had things that no other residential building

in houston had.

The idea came up of a cantilever pool, or projecting pool,

that would be visible throughout houston.

Narrator: The pool is on top of the 42-story

market square tower apartment building

in downtown houston, texas.

That was the goal, really, to take this to another level,

to make it a real icon for houston.

The pool is about 4 feet deep.

It is 48,000 gallons.

There's the swimming area,

and there is a shelf deck for sunbathing,

that you can put lounge chairs out there

and sit in about 6 inches of water.

When you get in the pool and you start walking out there,

it's very much like a traditional pool.

Whoo!

But then you come to an edge

where the concrete meets the acrylic.

Oh-ho! Look.

And you're able to walk out onto the acrylic,

and you have a straight shot down below,

down the face of the building

all the way to the sidewalk and the street below.

It projects about a little over 8 feet out

from the face of the building,

and it's supported by two 8-feet-deep concrete beams.

Narrator: Between the structural engineering,

material testing, and building,

the project was nearly five years in the making.

We were in design for the project for about two years,

and construction took 30 months.

We used one of the best structural engineers in town.

We used a special crystalline concrete to make it waterproof,

epoxy-coated rebar so all the metal in there

wouldn't have any risk of rusting out in the future,

designed it such that it will support the pool

if it were overflowing and had hurricane-force winds on it.

♪♪

the cantilever pool is made up of 320 square feet

of 5 1/2-inch-thick acrylic.

It's in a curved shape so that the acrylic makes both the floor

and the wall of the leading edge of the pool,

so we've really been kind of the talk of the world.

You see this? [ laughs ]

the glass in the ground -- ohh! [ laughing ] oh, man.

It's nice that you can sit in the pool and lounge

while you're staying cool by the water,

and then you plunge and then take a view

and then go back to your chair right inside the water.

It's a high-class living.

It's a real chill atmosphere, hanging out with your friends.

Perfect location -- perfect.

♪♪

narrator: This next pool is the centerpiece

of this high-tech home.

The pool became kind of the anchor of the house.

But the suspended dining room

is just the beginning of this modern marvel.

You won't believe what kind of designs I can come up with.

And a repurposed pool

that fits right into its natural surroundings.

So, these are the original redwoods

that were on the california coast.

It doesn't look like a swimming pool.

♪♪

♪♪

[ water bubbling ]

♪♪

narrator: When it comes to high-tech, futuristic pools,

nothing beats the brainchild of architect malika

and her engineer husband, junaid.

You put an engineer and an architect together,

it's a pretty fun dynamic.

[ laughs ]

they designed and built this house

in the hills of silicon valley,

and the creation quickly became a passion project for them

and their two young daughters.

This house was our third child, which we created together.

This was a very unique thing for us

because I haven't done anything like this before.

There was nothing here.

Our construction time was nearly two years.

It was done all from scratch.

The pool definitely is the highlight of this whole thing.

We both like modern architecture a lot.

We are very minimalistic.

We like open spaces, natural light.

The pool became kind of the anchor of the house

with everything radiating towards it,

so the kitchen,

the dining room,

the family room,

everything opens up into that space.

You can see the pool from everywhere.

Their daughters are also competitive swimmers,

so they built this pool specifically for them

to train throughout the season.

The pool is about 12 feet wide by 60 feet long.

The depth is about 5 1/2 and goes as deep as 8 feet.

We wanted the pool to have,

like, an outdoor/indoor connection,

something which will actually

open up the back of the house completely.

♪♪

so, the solution --

a 40-foot, retractable aircraft-hangar door,

powered by push-button hydraulics.

♪♪

this has probably never been done,

using the aircraft-hangar door

the way we have used it in the residence.

Junaid actually worked really closely

with our structural engineer,

and we came up with this bracing design.

It looks like an extension of the hydraulics,

but actually, it is a steel bracing

that we put in place to stop the forces

from carrying back into the house --

basically, keep our finishes from cracking.

The airport-hangar door was one of the funnest

and the most complicated things we've done

in the house together.

From an engineering point of view, it was stressful.

[ both laugh ]

but it was fun.

It is a totally different experience

when that door is open.

Check out the view.

♪♪

they didn't stop at engineering feats.

They also mimicked michelangelo's iconic

sistine chapel art at the bottom of the pool.

The painting that you see in the pool,

as an architecture student,

that was one of my favorite, favorite paintings.

Each tile is an inch by inch that's hand-installed.

And our friends and family,

they all just gather around food.

We wanted a glass structure right over the pool,

so we can see right through where we could sit and eat

and feel like we are suspended in air.

The dining room is about 10 feet above the pool --

the triple glass floor, so it's extremely safe.

You won't believe what kind of designs

I can come up with on paper,

but, you know, like, how to implement it

and how to trust that we can actually do it,

I think only an engineer and entrepreneur

can really push the limits for it.

[ chuckles ]

♪♪

an indoor/outdoor setup can be the best way

to get a year-round pool,

but in a sunshine city, like manhattan beach, california,

this indoor/outdoor pool

wasn't designed to get the most out of any kind of weather.

It was a way to make the best use of space.

For michael's pool,

a conventional pool was not gonna work.

The narrow lot he had to build on

left no room for a yard, let alone a pool.

That's when I saw the container pool was a perfect fit.

The most interesting feature of the pool --

it's got two 4-foot-by-8-foot windows.

We realized we were building him a human aquarium.

♪♪

something we hadn't done before.

Instead of a tv in your living room

are people swimming past your pool.

It's just the best entertainment, live.

That was the centerpiece of the design.

♪♪

it actually legitimately is a shipping container repurposed.

They're manufactured in a shop,

and they're shipped all across north america,

and they're really easy to mobilize and use.

Michael: The whole house took us

about a year and four months to build, designed it myself.

The fact that he built it into his house,

I mean, is pretty awesome.

To take it from my brain and get it done

and put the tile around it

and get it working was just magical.

Woman: Who's jumping in first? Me!

I want to. I want to. No, me!

1, 2, 3...

Whoo!

[ michael laughs ]

paul: So, the roof's literally cut out.

You get sunlight directly into the pool.

Michael: I like to blur the lines between interior and exterior.

You'll see that with the foldaway doors.

My favorite part of the whole house is the pool.

It's just everything I dreamed and hoped for

finally comes to fruition.

[ kids cheering and laughing ]

narrator: Unique pools are often born out of necessity,

but for the next design, the challenge was

they didn't have anything to start with in the first place.

The only way you can describe this pool is

it's floating in midair,

and that makes it very, very unique.

This window is, like, the gate to nature, infinity.

It's amazing.

♪♪

[ water bubbling ]

♪♪

narrator: On a canyon's edge of the santa monica mountains

is a pool that stands above the rest.

♪♪

the only way you can describe this pool is

it's floating in midair,

and that makes it very, very unique.

One of the reasons we bought this home is

because the view is quite spectacular,

and we decided that it's probably a good thing

to have a pool.

Narrator: The house sits on a steep cliff overlooking the canyon,

which makes building a pool here nearly impossible.

Man: Hey. You're very brave, doing that.

When you stand in this house and you look out at the view

and someone says, "well, I want a pool,"

the next question is, "well, where do you want this pool?"

because you don't have any space.

How do you make something unique and interesting

and make it work with the land

and the home that you're working with?

This kind of project is exactly the type of project

that I like to do because it is very challenging.

The entire pool is founded into bedrock

with large concrete caissons.

♪♪

narrator: Caissons are support pillars

made up of thousands of pounds of concrete.

The seven caissons hold the pool up

and give the impression that the pool is floating in midair.

To make it even more complex, there was no access.

It was literally a 5- or 6-foot-wide access area.

That was challenging, to say the least.

The pool is about 12x42 overall.

Narrator: And this pool emulates

the contemporary design of the house.

Don: The infinity edge on this pool is a traditional infinity edge,

and it flows over the edge

of the downhill portion of this pool.

However, the other side of the pool --

that's the house side --

has what we call a perimeter overflow edge,

which has the water flow over the top

and down into a hidden channel.

When swimming in the pool

and you go towards the infinity edge,

it's just spectacular -- the view,

and you can just float and stare out for hours.

♪♪

the jacuzzi's a lot of fun to just sit in,

have a drink, and look at the view.

It's very popular with our friends.

Narrator: Seeing the canyon across the pool

is, no doubt, amazing,

but it isn't the only way to appreciate this view.

They also added commercial-grade windows

outside a lower-level office

and on the exterior side of the pool,

so you can see all the way through the structure.

I suggested the windows for the pool

because if we didn't have a window there,

there would have been no view whatsoever.

You have the beautiful sparkling water day and night,

which really enhances the view from inside the house.

Narrator: Both windows are below the water inside the pool,

made from high-grade custom acrylic

typically used in aquariums.

This window is, like, the gate to nature, infinity.

It's amazing.

This house, although it's very valuable as-is,

will probably be increased by many millions of dollars

just because of the pool.

♪♪

narrator: It's called the viking triathlon.

So, you start in the hot tub, then you go into the sauna,

then you step out and you jump into the water.

But you have to do it quickly.

If you think about how cold it is, you're never gonna do it.

Your whole body, like, tenses up immediately,

but it feels good, in a weird way.

Whoo!

♪♪

narrator: Deep in the sonoma redwood forest

in northern california

is a pool that blends right into its environment.

Olle: It doesn't look like a swimming pool.

I think for me,

it was almost more of the sculptural opportunity,

this sort of black circle of water

literally in the treetops, which was just an exciting idea.

Narrator: 10 years ago, before the pool was even here,

olle built and designed a cabin on this property.

Olle: I built it mostly myself. I'm an architect.

You know, I've always built the places I've lived in.

I'm a builder, I'm a maker, so to me, it's never work.

The general architecture here is rectilinear, right angles.

There's nothing curved,

so the pool is this curved accent piece.

Narrator: A pool wasn't in his original plans for the house,

but olle happened to be in the right place at the right time.

I was working on a project in napa,

and it had this enormous redwood water tank on it,

and they were gonna bulldoze it,

and they said, "if you want it, you can have it,

but we need it out of here in a month."

so in a month, we scrambled, and we had to dig foundations,

we had to pour concrete,

we had to reframe part of the deck to accommodate it.

And then it was, well, how do you get the tank there?

Found a company -- they took it apart, reassembled it.

We filled it with water.

It's now a swimming pool.

So, these are the original redwoods

that were on the california coast.

They grew very, very slowly.

They have incredibly tight grain,

and they have so much tannin in them

that as long as they stay wet, nothing happens to the wood.

It doesn't rot.

This is without question our most photographed,

most recognized project we've done.

The pool is 25 feet in diameter, 14 feet deep.

It's about 50,000 gallons of water.

Most pools, you have to put a lot of chemicals in

to keep the water clean.

I never really wanted to put chemicals in this,

and then I found out, also, that chlorine is really bad for wood.

Narrator: So olle had to create his own way to clean the water

and built a biofiltration system.

You create another body of water,

which is really a wetlands,

so it has aeration, it has filtration,

and it has plants that will eat the algae

and the other impurities that you want to get rid of

and then pumping it back into the pool.

I discovered this round-barrel sauna made in canada,

which, of course, relates to the circle of the pool

and it just -- it seemed so perfect for it,

so I was like, "okay, that's the sauna. That's it."

so we added the sauna, and, of course, we had to build,

like, a two-story tower to put the thing in,

so not the easiest foundation for a sauna.

We had to make all the modifications

to use the wood stove, and then we modified the front

to hold the firewood and the kindling and all of that,

which is not part of their kit.

We added a hot tub.

You get hot in the hot tub, you jump in the pool --

back and forth.

Narrator: Olle combined all these elements --

the pool, the sauna, the hot tub --

into what he calls the viking triathlon.

It's a favorite dare among his nephew and friends

when they come up to visit.

So, you start in the hot tub...

Then you go into the sauna.

Now it's 200 degrees dry heat -- very different.

You sit in there about 10, 15 minutes.

Then you step out and you jump into the water.

But you have to do it quickly.

If you have time to think about how cold it is

or how cold it's gonna be when you hit that water,

you're never gonna do it.

Ohh!

Your whole body, like, tenses up immediately,

but it feels good, in a weird way.

♪♪

when I think of california,

I think of the cabin and the redwoods.

You know, now with the latest addition, sauna and the pool,

it's just been an amazing place to be.

Olle: I've always wanted a place to get away in the forest.

This is, to me, what being up here is about --

cooking, you know, making food for friends, entertaining.

Hear, hear.

[ laughter ]

good girl. Good girl.

Good girl.

Olle: It's always been a place of respite, retreat.

I can't imagine a project

that would have met our needs better than this one has.

♪♪

narrator: These pools are far from your standard rectangle.

They're extraordinary and top-of-the-line

in building, design, and function.

By challenging the unthinkable, these pools became art.

They're the talk of the town and the world

and the best part of a backyard summer day.

♪♪

[ kids cheering and laughing ]