A new public beach officially opened in Geneva on Saturday. The specially built Eaux-Vives beach on Lake Geneva, which has views of the Jet d’Eau fountain, has been over ten years in the making.
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The free 400-metre-long Eaux-Vives beach, near the La Grange Park and the Genève Plage complex, will be able to welcome 8,000 people a day when it is fully open. Strict rules ban music, barbecues, dogs, bicycles and roller blades at the site.
The project to build a new beach has been years in the making. It was initiated in 2008 by the Green parliamentarian Robert Cramer but was delayed in 2013 after a successful appeal by the environmental group WWF against the size of the embankments planned in order to build the beach. An amended project with smaller embankments, estimated at a total cost of CHF67 million ($68 million), finally went ahead.
Work on the stony beach, lawns and nearby reed marsh has taken two years, but is not fully complete. Construction work is also continuing to extend the neighbouring port. The Eaux-Vives beach will close on September 29 and will be fully operational next summer.
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The rise of urban swimming in Swiss cities
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‘Swim CityExternal link‘ also looks at contemporary river-swimming projects from Europe and the US, such as ‘Flussbad’ in Berlin, ‘POOL IS COOL’ from Brussels, ‘Thames Baths’ in London, ‘Ilot Vert’ in Paris, ‘Charles River Swimming Initiative’ in Boston and ‘+POOL’ in New York. (S AM Swiss Architecture Museum)
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Until the 1950s, waste was dumped directly into Swiss rivers and lakes, resulting in dying fish, bad smells and swimming bans. Much has changed.
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There are more than 500 outdoor and natural swimming pools in Switzerland. For many of them, the summer season has begun.
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The majority of Switzerland’s open-air swimming pools face a harsh reality: spend a fortune on cleaning or close permanently.
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It’s the best way to cool down on a hot, sticky summer’s day, the Bernese say. Grab your swimsuit, walk up along the Aare, find a spot to get in – jump or step in carefully – and let yourself be carried away by its fresh, clean water. Half the town can be seen heading…
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Taking a dip in outdoor pools has a tradition in Switzerland going back 200 years. It's a custom that begins anew every May.
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