From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
The Underground Pool Reconstruction — A Tbilisi Immersive Architecture
This article documents a built site. For the novel's original underground pool, see The underground stone swimming pool beneath the city.
The Underground Pool Reconstruction is a built immersive installation (Tbilisi, 2020–2023) that replicates and expands the subterranean stone swimming pool from Chapter 3, inviting visitors to descend, swim, and exit through a reconstructed mural depicting the unjoined seam. It stands as one of the few adaptations to render the glitch architecturally.
Design and construction
The architects accessed a disused limestone quarry beneath the Metekhi neighbourhood and lined it with pale stone, reconstructing the novel's "feeding from the harbour" as an actual tidal exchange: water enters through sealed channels beneath the city and drains in cycles. The pool is swimmable year-round, temperature maintained by natural thermal gradient. Divers report finding the exit-mural with their eyes closed, guided by the water's direction and by a barely-audible humming — the Kármán line motif, amplified through stone.
The glitch rendered
The mural at the exit depicts Leif and Katita with their halves unjoined — a painted seam running vertically down their bodies, one half Newcastle (car park, preschool, exoskeletons), the other half desert (Half Two: mechanical seagull, crocodiles, cabin). Swimmers exit by passing through this painted divide, a physical crossing of the unjoined seam.
Since opening, visitors have reported disorientation, profound quiet, and altered temporal perception. The Reconstruction is booked eighteen months in advance.