Swimming on Brussels’s rooftop
The ultimate holiday feeling? Splashing around in a pool, of course. You will not only find swimming pools in that Spanish villa under the sun, but also in cities. In Barcelona, London or New York, rooftops have long been hotspots for sunbathing or dancing, but also for swimming. It is just short in comparison with the infinity pool of Marina Sands Bay in Singapore, but Brussels also has a rooftop pool with the JAM Hotel.
© Photo : Oana Crainic – Arch.Olivia Gustot
Year-round attraction
Located in a hip neighbourhood around Avenue Louise in Saint-Gilles, the “JAM Hotel” was a brutalist office building and then briefly an art school. The hotel has its own restaurant, a Japanese spa ‘Atsukan’ and a rooftop bar, which was designed by renowned interior designer Lionel Jadot. But the big eye-catcher of that same rooftop is the long heated swimming pool. The pool is heated to 28 °C and is therefore accessible all year round. Tourists thus enjoy a refreshing (or warming) dip with a stunning, almost 360° view of Brussels and far beyond.
For the design of this completely renovated hotel, including the swimming pool as an attraction, the JAM Hotel hired architect Olivia Gustot. The Brussels-based architect was also allowed to renovate the beautiful “Hotel Le Berger” in Ixelles. This hotel has also its own swimming pool, for the pool-lovers among us.
Derbigum: waterproof reliable
Gustot faced a challenging task for the construction of the swimming pool: although the concrete structures of the original building were preserved, the roof had to be intensely reinforced. For this, the architect Olivia Gustot did not choose Derbigum SP FR by chance, as the two reinforcements give the roofing membrane great dimensional stability and good tear and puncture resistance. In bouwenenwonen.net, she herself says the following about this:
“My team and I mainly design contemporary architecture, with many flat roofs. For waterproofing, we invariably choose Derbigum because it is reliable and very easy to install, also for details and finishings. In this case, it was also the perfect solution given to the heavy load placed on the waterproofing.”
The roofing membranes were carefully installed by AM Expert Construct, from Zaventem.
