“The Swimming Pools in Milan project was born in 2016, on a warm early summer day, when I found myself at the Argelati swimming pool in my neighborhood in Milan. I discovered that it was the city’s first outdoor bathing center, later renovated and expanded by the architect Arrigo Arrighetti in the mid-20th century. The aesthetics of the pool took me back in time to when I was a child and my parents would take me to public pools to escape the city’s heat. The smell of chlorine, the sounds of water, and the buzz of people, the sensations—everything was like a memory resurfacing from the past. Milan is not the city where I grew up, but I tried to portray its pools as if they were places from my own memory, places I am attached to.” – Stefan Giftthaler