Designing Outside The Lines

Innovation and imagination are key to creating one-of-a-kind luxury pools and outdoor living spaces.

- Alexandra Pecci

Miami offers more than its fair share of gorgeous views, but there’s one that might top them all: The rooftop pool at Villa Venetian. Paul Fischman, Principal of Choeff Levy Fischman Architecture + Design was enlisted to revamp the gorgeous home, including its existing pool. Teaming with designers at Aquatic Consultants, Fischman removed the pool’s existing infinity-edge and replaced it with structural glass to create a transparent vanishing edge. The result is an even-more incredible destination that incorporates the Miami skyline and Intracoastal Waterway beyond: A see-through wonder that allows swimmers to see downtown Miami and Biscayne Bay, even when they’re underwater. Swim jets and underwater speakers add to the luxe poolscape.

“It really is breathtaking,” Fischman says. “It’s a play on the eyes…it literally takes the downtown Miami and Biscayne Bay view and brings it up to the pool.”

It’s these kinds of innovative, exciting, and fresh ideas that the most cutting- edge pool designers are executing as they constantly push themselves to design outside the lines. These designers explore the globe for inspiration as they broaden their horizons, and are “always looking at different architects and design for good ideas” and applying those disparate ideas to everything they do, says Roger Soares II, president of Hydroscapes LLC.

GETTING THE LOOK

Pool pros like Soares, who pride themselves on staying at the forefront of design, love to incorporate the hottest materials in their clients’ outdoor living space. He points to the trend of using large-format tile, especially in porcelain.

“They’ve come a long way in the last year with that,” he says.