Swimming can have an incredible impact on a person’s overall wellbeing. It can help increase physical activity, allow for a respite from the stress of everyday life, and have a profound and positive impact on one’s mental health. In addition to this, swimming outdoors, whether in an open air swimming pool or wild swimming in a lake or other body of water, can create a feeling of connection to nature. With all of this considered it is important to consider the role that landscape architecture can play in the future of swimmable landscapes.

This practicum aims to explore this through reflection of the social history of swimming, the benefits swimming has for your health and the relatively recent spike in the popularity of wild swimming; resulting in the design of what a wild swimming pool might look like within the context of Winnipeg, Manitoba.