Orange Coast College Swim Stadium

Orange Coast College Swim Stadium

The partnership of Neutra and Alexander was commissioned to do a new master plan for the new Orange Coast College in the early 1950s. Despite the success of some individual buildings such as the Speech Art and Music Center, the campus as a whole lacks a sense of architectural unity.

The swim stadium includes a training and a racing pool. Neutra wrote that “many combined and separate twin pool shapes were tried out in anteprojects.” The two teaching and racing pools are “dimensioned for off-campus participation” to link the college and community. “Attendance and schedules were studied, and the office researched poured-in-place, reinforced concrete pools, thin shell Gunite pools, prefabricated steel pools, prefabricated aluminum alloy pools.” The concrete diving board looks like an abstraction of a racing swimmer’s body poised to dive.