Whether compact or expansive, choreographic or minimalist, theatrical whirlpools, or designed as discreet entities blending neatly with their surroundings, private swimming pools have gradually come to be treated with the same attention and criteria as other features of a building's architecture. The projects we have chosen to illustrate here in dazzling photography show how the wide variety of types and forms devised - now completely liberated from the restrictions formerly posed by prefabricated components - is the upshot of a direct application of the same notions of technical and compositional details and uses of materials that denote today's architecture.