Tag Archives: pool

This miniature LEGO Billiards Table comes with every accessory from cue sticks to powder cubes!

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You’ve got Foosball, you’ve got Mini Golf, but have you ever heard of mini billiards? This tiny (yet somewhat playable) LEGO billiards set from the mind of LEGO builder Golden Eye captures the grandeur of a full-scale billiards table, but at a fraction of the size. Built with all the trims and fittings (including pockets, a gutter, and a cue-stand), Golden Eye’s Vintage Billiards Table is an adorable tabletop build that you can potentially even interact with, playing a game on its faux plastic turf!

Designer: Golden Eye

Golden Eye’s MOC (My Own Creation) is a meticulously crafted homage to classic pool tables, incorporating both form and function in a way that LEGO enthusiasts and billiards fans alike will appreciate. It taps into the nostalgia of vintage recreational games while presenting an innovative challenge for builders. The table includes thoughtful design details, such as nets for catching balls, a built-in scoring system with chips, and hooks for accessories like a bridge stick. Every element is designed with precision to replicate the essence of a real billiards table, but in LEGO form.

The underneath tray is practical, offering a space to store additional balls, while also contributing to the table’s structural integrity. The cue stand on the side features both 9-ball and 8-ball racks, giving you the opportunity to explore different game styles, playable with the striped and solid balls that come with the table. As for the accessories, the inclusion of two chalks, two felt brushes, and even a hand-powder stone showcases the level of detail considered to make this as realistic as possible.

Although it isn’t possible to play a proper game on the table (the bricked surface is far too unreliable and the plastic balls have very little weight or inertia), you could totally engage with it on a purely fidget level, using it to pass time and probably settle quick wagers with friends/colleagues.

Golden Eye’s LEGO Vintage Billiards Table is currently a submission on the LEGO Ideas Forum, an online community for fans to share their own creative builds. With just under 2,000 votes, the entry is slowly making its way to the 10,000 vote mark, following which LEGO’s internal team considers it for review before deciding whether to turn it into a box set for people to buy. You can vote for the LEGO Vintage Billiards Table on the LEGO Ideas website here!

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Proposed urban swimming pool in Lisbon brings river closer to the city

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My ideal place to live in is one that is near enough to the sea that I can go to it whenever I want but still be able to live in the city and all its creature comforts. Having a river where I can also swim in and do other activities without spending hours to go there would be the next best thing. Alas, I currently don’t live in a place like that so I have to live vicariously through other people who live in cities that are blessed to be near bodies of water.

Designers: X Atelier and Atelier BAUM

Lisbon is one such city although the nearby River Tagus is not immediately accessible to the city center. A couple of architectural firms have teamed up to propose an urban swimming pool to connect both residents and tourists to the river directly without having to travel or at least spend hours stuck in traffic jams. The Loop Pool Tejo is inspired by the movement of the water and wants to make several aquatic pursuits easier to access for whoever wants to spend a day at the river. It uses the industrial area of the Braço de Prata pontoon as the link from the city to the river.

From the pontoon, you get a walkway to the circular center in the midst of the river which actually draws the circulation flow around it. There is a solarium and amphitheater facing the west and to the south, there is a second slope where people can sit and rest if they get tired from swimming. It’s also the entry point to other activities like paddling and rowing. The west wing also has a diving jump point into the tank in the middle while underneath the water level there is a shaded rest area for those who want to escape the sun.

If you just want to sit on the amphitheater, you’ll get a view of a rippling water drop and the steps around it create a looping effect. It’s a pretty interesting structure to place in the city and in the middle of the river and can also be inspiration for other cities that also have a nearby body of water that can be used for recreation.

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Pool noodle furniture brings a spirit of play to both indoor and outdoor spaces

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Bright, colorful, flexible, buoyant, and life-saving. These are the words that are often used to describe pool noodles, sometimes called waterlogs or even water woggles. These floating foam tubes allow kids and adults alike to engage in playful banter in the pool while still remaining safe, though they’re also finding use outside of the water. Their flexible bodies and soft material make the perfect objects for safe play, but they’ve amusingly also become the foundations of designs completely unrelated to their original use. Take this experimental set of furniture that employs these vibrant tubes to deliver that same whimsical atmosphere to chairs, tables, and everything in between.

Designer: Lieyah Dagan

They may come by any other name, but pool noodles are a popular component in many fanciful designs, from playground obstacle courses to car covers. Their ubiquity, affordability, and flexibility make it easy to shape them into different objects, combining them to form a more complex composition of rods, circles, and arcs. What pool noodles aren’t known for is stability and rigidity, properties that are almost antithetical to the very essence of these foamy objects. And yet that’s exactly what this furniture is presenting, mixing contrasting elements to give the designs a distinct, lively character.

The first step in producing the Looped line of indoor and outdoor furniture was to actually break chairs, tables, and other furniture down to their frames, revealing the structure that ultimately gives them form. The pool noodles are then used to “flesh out” the actual shape of the furniture, giving them mass that would be needed to support their newfound purpose as utilitarian objects. Once the final designs have been selected, dowels and medium-density fiberboard (MDF) are added to provide the needed support to make the furniture become more stable and reliable.

Of course, it wouldn’t be fun if the pool noodles simply followed the same shape as the original furniture. Looped embodies not just the characteristics but also the spirit of these playful waterlogs, employing plenty of curves, loops, and over-the-top proportions that make the furniture almost feel like toys. That, for better or worse, is both the strength and the flaw of the design.

Loop has an undeniable pull that makes people want to play with it, whether it’s because of the bright colors, the soft material, or familiarity with pool noodles. That’s fine with soft toys like actual pool noodles, but playing with a chair or a table brings risks of accidents and injuries. In the end, it creates a perception of playful engagement when they’re also supposed to be designed for serious use, creating a conflict in the mind of the viewer that is both enthralling but also a bit confusing.

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This Pavilion-Style Pool House In Northern Spain Is Inspired By Japanese Design Philosophy

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This stunning pool house designed by Spanish studio Baldó Arquitectura is called the Godai Pavilion, and it is characterized by a generous use of bamboo and an impressive overhanging roof. The pool house was created for a home located in rural Cantabria, in northern Spain. The structure is heavily inspired by Japanese design and features many of its unique details.

Designer: Baldó Arquitectura

The Godai Pavilion was designed in accordance with the local climate, and to boast the natural materials used to build it. The pool house is built to the south of the site, in turn building an enclosed courtyard garden with other pre-existing buildings on the site. “The pavilion [creates] a dialogue between different architectures, with the pool as a central element and a link between the existing home and the new pavilion,” the studio said.

The name and design of the pool house are inspired by the Japanese philosophy of godai, which is based on the five fundamental elements – fire, earth, water, wind, and space. You can see the concept in the structure’s large roof, and the sheer transparency of the facades, which showcase the surrounding landscape. You can see that the facades of the structure make a slow shift from solid to void, and are covered with bamboo slats. The slats follow the Fibonacci sequence and are designed to offer privacy to the building and control the natural lighting. The pavilion was constructed using bamboo, which brings to mind the image of Japanese-style tatami rooms. The ceilings are also inspired by the art of origami.

The interior of the pavilion is marked by a triple-aspect living space, which leads to a timber deck, where steps take you to the pool. Besides bamboo other materials were also integrated into the pavilion such as cork, local pine, mineral rock wool insulation, and recycled oriented strand board panels.

Various passive design systems for solar and rain protection were also integrated into the structure, for example, a large roof that offers plenty of shade and reduces solar gain. “The local climate takes on a fundamental value, where strong winds, rain, and summer sun become protagonists,” explained the studio.

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