Wondrous Pool (Vivarium)
Insulating fire bricks, 7 glass sculptures
2025

 

On the eastern coast of Libya, in the ancient city of Apollonia (Susa), a Roman vivarium was carved into the shoreline, perhaps part of a villa maritima, or a commercial harbour complex. These coastal pools were designed to keep fish alive, categorised until needed. The sea, unruly and abundant, was to be disciplined into architecture, and the fish became both emblem and commodity. Today, the pool lies at the bottom of the sea it once tried to domesticate, a poetic reversal, if not a deliberate one.

The vivarium was one of 14 submerged sites mapped in a 2012 proposal for an underwater archaeological park, published in the International Journal of the Society for Underwater Technology. The proposed tour would guide visitors along submerged towers, quarries, and piers, glimpsed through refracted waters. This work reconstructs the vivarium, scaled down and based on estimated dimensions, it is built not from quarried stone but from insulating fire bricks. The pool becomes a kiln, and what once contained now hosts conditions for transformation.