“Which do you think is cooler: the Martian or the gorilla?”

For sure, there’s only one time a Barton Malow team ever heard that question: during construction of the two Huron Valley Schools (Michigan) family pools. This was a first-time venture for the school district, and everyone let their imaginations run free. Schoolchildren chose the themes and worked with architect Fanning Howey, so pool builder Gall Construction could bring the designs to life.

Milford High hosts a jungle; a brightly striped snake slithers around a 25’ foot tall gorilla and into the water. And the shrieking coming from within? No, the snake isn't devouring prey. He’s a water slide, and the kids have never had a better time. They emerge to a colorful waterscape: freestanding, water-spurting, fiberglass figures, and on the walls, more jungle creatures – a hippo, an elephant. These are not paintings, but 5,000,000 small tiles in exacting colors. Together, they create light and shadow and atmosphere.

At Lakeland High, the sounds of excitement are much the same, but here, where a space theme dominates, everyone rides a meteor into the water, and emerges to see spaceships and the rings of Saturn.

Now, this Barton Malow team was used to setting up schedules and finishing work on time. They were quite surprised to find that when an artist wants to find the perfect snakeskin pattern or the right palette for a meteor exploding, there’s no rushing the process. With the tiles, squares were chosen one by one – a lot more time consuming than the usual repeated pattern.

The artists’ creativity brought out our resourcefulness. The schedule could, and often did, change daily, and the team sequenced and resequenced work to keep everything on track. It's all worth it! Thousands of households have signed up to use the pools.

Asked one young mother, “Where else could you travel to new worlds and still be five minutes from home?”