Lifeguard Tower - in The Arts

In The Arts

Architect Frank Gehry designed a lifeguard tower into a house as part of a remodel in Venice Beach, California in 1985.

In 1988 a gallery commissioned "14 of the world's best-known architects to design lifeguard towers, those familiar fixtures that protect lifeguards from the elements and provide landmarks to help swimmers remember where they put their towels." The designers included Stanley Tigerman, Michael Graves, Richard Meier, Charles Moore, Aldo Rossi, Hans Hollein, Antoine Predock and Cesar Pelli and were given specifications including 360-degree visibility, vandal-proofing and other requirements as well as a hypothetical budget of $17,000 for their designs. The "superstar" West Coast architects were part of an exhibit of drawings and models of proposals for designer lifeguard towers in 1990.

A similar contest was held in 2004 in Miami Beach with 25 local architects. The contest was organized by Jeremy Calleros Gauger, a graduate student at the University of Miami School of Architecture, and the designs were displayed at the Ocean Beach Auditorium. The winners announced were a functional cube with louvers and a modified surfboard design. A "striking" design called Plank earned an honorable because "there had to be space for a lifeguard to change out of a wet bathing suit."