Beyond summer: designing NYC’s public pools for year-round use
And vote now to see Culture of Bathing at SXSW 2026
As NYC’s outdoor pools prepare to close for the season, Public Pools proposes a vision for year-round use as saunas, stages, and community hubs. We showcase their bold ideas currently on view at Citygroup Gallery. Plus, support our Culture of Bathing SXSW 2026 panel proposal, exploring how public wellness spaces can reconnect us in an age of burnout. Voting ends on Sunday – don’t miss it.
On the first Sunday after Labor Day, as the last bather dries off and the lifeguards fold their umbrellas, New York does something curious: it shuts down all 54 of its public outdoor pools (see map below). The weather is still fine but the gates close until late June of the following year, leaving the blue rectangles to sit empty through months of untapped potential.
Architect Karolina Czeczek and photographer Anna Morgowicz want to change this. Their collaboration, Public Pools – currently exhibited at Citygroup Gallery – is part documentation, part speculative proposal; an homage to the city’s most democratic leisure spaces that asks what if these pools didn’t just hibernate for nine months of the year? What if the swimming season could be extended and they could be reimagined as saunas, performance venues, classrooms, or neighborhood gathering spots when no one’s swimming?
The pool becomes a stage
In the summer of 1936, eleven large-scale public swimming complexes opened across NYC to a rapturous response, with thousands attending each opening ceremony. The pools provided space for safe swimming, social gathering and much-needed recreation. These Olympic-size complexes, cataloged below, funded by the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) and were marvels of engineering with the latest cleaning, heating and lighting technology. They created a new kind of public architecture, foregrounding recreation and gender integration in public space.
WPA pools have become part of the city’s social fabric, hosting performances, Olympic training and free swimming lessons. Although there is a question about the equity of the pools’ distribution in the city, with fewer built in predominantly Latino or African American neighborhoods, the pools have remained steadfastly popular.
Karolina Czeczek proposes adapting all WPA pool buildings into cooling centers in the summer and warming centers in winter to build climate resilience. The former diving pool of the Astoria Pool (top image) could become a year-round performance venue, with its readymade auditorium waiting to host local dance and theatre groups, or film screenings.
From splash to steam
In the late sixties, the city added a new typology: the mini pool, built in response to the dearth of water and cooling opportunities in underserved areas of the city. Around 60 modest 40’ x 20’ splash zones were installed in overheated neighborhoods. A few were literally mobile—rolled out on trucks on hot afternoons.
Czeczek imagines these humble pools covered in winter by structures housing public saunas, finally importing en masse to New York the Nordic art of sweating communally in a wooden box. Bleachers on top could host outdoor classrooms or neighborhood movie nights.
Inflating the swim season
And then there are the vest-pocket pools of the seventies, compact rectangles squeezed into dense neighborhoods, each with a 75’ x 60’ intermediate pool and a 12’ x 12’ wading pool. For these, Czeczek proposes inflatable covers with a heated interior that would extend the free Learn to Swim program into the school year. More kids would acquire a critical life skill, and adults would gain an affordable way to exercise through the winter.
The architecture is already there, waiting. New York just needs the imagination to see pools not as seasonal novelties but as all-year civic infrastructure, equal parts pleasure, wellbeing and resilience. For now, New Yorkers have two weeks to make use of the pools – dive in!
See all five proposals at Public Pools, an exhibition at Citygroup Gallery, 104b Forsyth Street, New York, through September 6. The exhibition is supported by an Independent Project Grant from The Architectural League of New York and the New York State Council on the Arts.
Karolina Czeczek, architect, principal Only If, and critic at Yale Architecture
Anna Morgowicz, photographer, annamorgowicz.com
Public Pools: public-pools.com
Vote now for our panel at SXSW 2026
We’re excited to share that Culture of Bathing has submitted a panel proposal for SXSW 2026! We’d love your support to help bring it to life.
Our panel, “Why the Future of Wellness Looks a Lot Like the Past,” explores how we can design public spaces, like bathhouses and public infrastructure, for rest, connection, and restoration. At a time when isolation, burnout, and disconnection are on the rise, we need solutions.
Help us bring this important conversation to one of the world’s biggest stages. Vote for our panel via SXSW Panel Picker and help us make the case for public wellness infrastructure rooted in history, culture, and collective care.
Voting closes on Sunday (8/24) — don’t wait!
Thank you for being part of this movement. Let’s build the future rooted in community by honoring what’s always connected us.
Happenings
Banya Fest
Breathing new life into the ancient Slavic practice - expect a village of banyas, cold plunge and Slavic cuisine.
Saturday, October 4, 2025, 4-9pm. Prior Lake, Michigan. Book
Workshop: Prehistoric Bathing & The Parliament of Species
Eden Baths invites artists, practitioners, and researchers to take part in a three-day immersive workshop that explores ancestral sauna-making, multispecies dialogue, and ecological diplomacy. Deadline: September 7 Apply
News
Charting the rise and rise of the Melbourne bathhouse.
Sydney Morning Herald, August 18, 2025
Miles from the ocean, there’s incredible cave diving beneath the streets of Budapest –in the same thermal waters that supply the city’s famed baths.
CNN, August 18, 2025
Mugwort, milk and moisturizer: how old Korean spa treatments are luring young tourists.
Korea JoongAng Daily, August 15, 2025
One Last Thing
Apparently, frogs love saunas too. Research in the journal Nature shows that frogs can stave off a deadly fungus by simply sitting in brick “frog saunas” higher than 83°F/ 28°C.
We’d love to hear from you - please send a DM, or email hello@cultureofbathing.com
Frog saunas are just what I needed to see today 🧡
This is amazing.