The creative team behind the Australian exhibition at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale are turning to crowdsourcing to invite the public to share their images and short narratives of the inspirational pools of Australia.

The Pool by architectural practice Aileen Sage and urban strategist Michelle Tabet was chosen by the Australian Institute of Architects’ Venice Biennale Committee for its “incisive interest in the connections between landscape, culture and architecture as observed through the frame of a singular architectural and landscape typology”.

The Pool “is not just about the typology of a pool, but also a pool of collaboration”, explained the creative team in a recent interview with ADR. “The three creative directors and a number of our collaborators currently all share a studio space . . . we see this as the pool that has made this project possible”. As such, to assist with this collaboration, they are seeking to employ crowdsourcing to form a database of photographs and short narratives to inform their research for the exhibition.

They are seeking to gain understanding and differing perspectives that Australians have in relation to the concept of a pool. Creative team Aileen Sage and Michelle Tabet are all too aware of the many and varied understandings and memories related to the pool, citing their own recollections of “learning to swim and socialising by the backyard or municipal pools, coastal and harbour settings to going on a bushwalk and uncovering a beautiful pool of water wedged between or at the base of a rock face”.

Visitors can expect to see a pool constructed within the new exhibition space and be transported poolside through an immersive and memorable experience within the new Denton Corker Marsall designed pavilion. Use of the senses in this exhibit, particularly sight, smell and sound, will create a montage of sensory illusions. “There was something particularly Australian about this [exhibition]” says the Creative team. “This is a project about celebrating national identity and culture. It also celebrates and speaks directly to Venice, the city of water, as its context.”

The 2016 Biennale sees the inaugural architecture exhibition in the new Australian Pavilion, which opens in May 2015.

Click here to submit your musings on pools, and help the team frame the exhibition and the stories they share with the world at Venice.