This project won the 2013 Architizer A+ Jury Award and Popular Choice Award in the Health Care + Aging category. See the full list of winners here.

A lackluster pool is like a bad cheesecake. If it fails to supply delight and escape, its existence just seems pointless. The Hotel Castell dels Hams, on the Spanish island of Majorca, had a pool problem. Though it was housed in a glass and aluminum shell, “the pool was dark and thermally worked quite badly with a lot of heat loss through this enclosure,” writes architect Cristian Santandreu, whose firm Estudio A2arquitectos revamped the swimming situation—and added an adjacent spa—in 2011. The architects’ splashy new design wowed our A+ judges and our readers, garnering both the jury prize and the popular vote in the Health Care + Aging category of the A+ Awards.

The pool’s new wrapper is punctured with square windows and skylights on three sides (plus the roof). With all that light bouncing off the water and the pool floor, guests get a hint of topsy-turviness, as though they are swimming on the ceiling. Meanwhile, the really committed sunbathers can try for a geometric suntan! Read more.

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The one good thing about tax day? The nice tax refund that we—or, well, some of us—get in the mail, courtesy of the US or state government. And while we should be putting that money away for safekeeping, well, what’s the fun in that? From all-out culinary experiences to diamond-encrusted watches, here are some of the ways we wish we were spending our tax return—and, this being Architizer—we’ve included the best places to splurge too, so, you know, you can do so in style. Click through to see all our picks!

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It’s safe to say that our Groundhog Day prediction was miserably off target. Winter is still clinging on as we pass into March, and it shows little sign of letting up. So what to do? Simple: Go on Spring Break! Which poses another, more pressing question: Where to go for Spring Break?

We took a poll at Architizer HQ, and we came to the near unanimous decision—we’d all like to be sipping some bubbly (or slushy) while staring out onto some spectacular, sunny vista from an infinity pool. We couldn’t think of a more leisurely or luxurious way to escape the Northeast chill. Here are our top infinity pool destinations. Click through to see them all!

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Photo: JUCO

In case you haven’t noticed, we at Architizer are obsessed with pools. (And spas, and fountains…) So for this week’s Guess The Building feature we’ve picked an extreme close-up of one of our favorite pools. Can you guess what it is? Share your speculations in the comments section below!

UPDATE: The answer is Philip Johnson’s Fort Worth Water Gardens, in Texas.

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Kauffman House; Photo: David Glomb/Marmol Radziner

If the soul of American modernism could be marked on a map, there’d be an ‘X’ over Palm Springs, California.  The desert city is a wellspring of architectural design of all scales, from small, sculptural houses and swanky resort clubhouses to the bent-aluminum furniture that sits in them. Landmarks like Richard Neutra’s Kauffman House and John Lautner’s Elrod House litter the city grounds (and hills), many of which will be on view at Palm Springs Modernism Week, launching this Thursday. To commemorate the event’s opening, we thought we’d assemble a brief photographic history of the development of the Palm Springs period. All the blog bait after the jump.

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For those of you who haven’t noticed, we at Architizer love Pinterest (oh boy, it’s one addictive site!). We launched our account early this year, and we’ve been pinning our little hearts out ever since. You’ll find a menagerie of boards: green roofs, tree houses, buildings for pets, cantilevers, observation towers, optical illusions, maps & models, extreme architecture, and many more. One of our most popular boards so far: swimming pools. Even with winter approaching here in the U.S., it’s still nice to daydream about refreshing dips in the piscine—particularly if that pool was designed by Zaha Hadid or is perched on a Greek mountaintop overlooking the Aegean Sea. Here, we feature our most-pinned swimming pools in recent months. Be sure to check out the Architizer Pinterest account for more inspiration!

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Image by Michael Moran

The Parsons Design Workshop has completed its most recent project, Splash House, a pool house at the Highbridge Pool and Recreation Center in Washington Heights. The outcome of a long collaboration process between Parsons graduate students, city officials, and community residents, the new pool house marks the resurgence of High Bridge and its surrounding park land, leading up to the expected reopening of the bridge in 2014. Continue.

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Nettleton 198, Cape Town, South Africa

We’ve crash-landed into August (!), and the a/c has been out at the Architizer HQ for the last week. With temperatures pushing past the 90s (mid-30s C), work conditions haven’t exactly been optimal. Still, we took refuge in this week’s top “breezy” projects, and while they didn’t help us cool down, that doesn’t mean they aren’t incredibly cool. Nearly all can found in warm-to-hot and humid climates (with one exception)–from the Pitiusic Islands (Spain) to South Africa, Vietnam to Australia–and in each case, the same principle arises, namely knock down some walls and let the breeze flow. Happy travels, and remember, stay cool!

Tangga House, Singapore

Feldbalz, Zurich, Switzerland

Bamboo Wing, Vinh Phuc province, Vietnam

Can Manuel d’en Corda, Formentera, Spain

Fig Tree Pocket House 2, Queensland, Australia

Nettleton 198, Cape Town, South Africa

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The “i Resort” is located near a small hill across the river from the Vietnamese coastal city of Nha Trang. Built to accommodate the growing demand for hot springs and spas, the resort features mud baths as well as simple swimming pools, all nestled in a suitably tropical setting of palm trees, flowers, and thatched huts. Designed by a21studĩo, the Vietnamese architecture firm who previously designed a house with tree inside of it and an office made completely out of stone, the i Resort seems rooted in the vernacular but with a nice hint of sleek minimalism.

The resort has a number of passive cooling features built in to combat the potentially oppressive heat and humidity of the tropical latitudes. Rooms are situated around open-air pools; when wind passes over them, evaporation removes heat from the surrounding area. In addition, native flora are woven through the gardens between buildings, creating arbors and trellises to shade resort patrons while providing brilliant splashes of color to the seven acres of grounds. Click through for more.

Evaporative cooling keeps the rooms at a pleasant temperature

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Zaha Hadid’s Olympic Aquatics Center.

We’re down to just eight days until the London Olympics, excitement over our favorite sport–swimming!–is reaching fever pitch. Can Michael Phelps defend his titles? Will 17-year-old Lia Neal make a name for herself as the team’s second-ever African American swimmer?

Even if you’re not a fan of the sport, the aquatic events at the Olympics are fun to watch, because host cities tend to pull out all the stops when it comes to designing the venues. Remember Beijing’s Watercube? This year’s aquatics center was designed by Iraqi-born, London-based architect Zaha Hadid, and it’s a doozy: sculptural concrete, an undulated, dysmorphic ceiling, and alien-like diving boards.

As far as we’re concerned, there’s a lot for both swim fans and architecture fans to be excited about. That’s why we’re holding a pool party with our friends Duravit next week. On wednesday evening, we’ll celebrate the Olympics with swim footage, Olympic trivia, and all-American summer treats! Duravit president Tim Schroeder will lead the evening’s festivities, which’ll take place in their appropriately-blue-themed Duravit showroom in Midtown.

We hope you’ll come out and join us on Wednesday. In the event you can’t make it, though, get into the aquatic spirit with eleven remarkable pool designs, after the jump!

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