8.2m Vogue Slimline with Glass Window, Pacific, Bundoora VIC

The brief

Bring the colour of the pool into the house through a glass window — don’t make us look at a retaining wall.

A 1m level change between the house and the rest of the yard would normally call for a retaining wall — functional but visually dead. The brief here flipped the problem: build the pool *into* the slope, with a glass panel through the pool wall so the house windows look at water rather than concrete.

Custom mould for the window

The pool shell was manufactured with a customised mould to receive the window frame.

Cutting a viewing window into a fibreglass shell on-site isn’t an option — the structural integrity needs the cut-out to be part of the factory build. The mould was modified to leave the right channel for the glass to be installed after the shell was placed.

Wrap retaining edge beam

The concrete beam was designed with a wrap retaining construction — building the window channel into the structural element.

The concrete edge beam around the pool was poured as a wrap retaining structure, with the window channel formed into the beam itself. The glass panels installed into this channel are sealed for the pool’s lifetime — structural and watertight in one element.

Why the glass doesn’t need to be 1200mm

Normally a pool wall doubling as a barrier needs 1200mm. Here it didn’t — a separate fence handles compliance.

Australian pool-barrier rules require 1200mm of height for non-climbable zones. On this build, a separate pool fence handles compliance, and no opening windows on the house look directly into the pool zone. That meant the glass window could be sized for visual effect, not regulatory minimum — the proportions are right for the view, not over-tall for legal reasons.