UCLA architecture alumni win pool design contest

UCLA alumni Salvador Ceja and Sergio Marquez were looking for ways to pay off their student loans when they stumbled across a contest. The challenge was to design a safe swimming pool that would protect infants and young children from drowning.

Though they were finishing up their last quarter of classes in the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, Ceja and Marquez jumped at the opportunity to participate.

“The topic was actually something that mattered,” Ceja said. “The project seemed more real than a lot of the other things we learned in school.”

Ceja and Marquez won first place in the competition and were awarded $5,000 at the contest’s awards ceremony in Newport Beach in June.

“I feel a great sense of accomplishment. I will be able to use what I have learned about child safety and pool design for the rest of my career,” Marquez said.

Marquez said that he hopes to become a licensed architect and possibly work in Europe. Ceja currently works at a small architecture firm in Newport Beach.

The 2009 Pool Safety Design contest was organized by Pacific Life and the Drowning Prevention Foundation, which works to reduce the number of drowning deaths among young children.

Nadina Riggsbee started the foundation in 1985 as a way of channeling her grief after a tragic accident in 1978. Riggsbee and her husband had gone out to dinner, and the babysitter they had hired left the children alone for 15 minutes to use the bathroom. When she returned, she found the children lying facedown in the pool.

Samira Riggsbee, 2, died, and her 1-year-old brother JJ was left with severe brain damage.

Since then, Nadina Riggsbee has campaigned for pool safety.

According to the Drowning Prevention Foundation’s Web site, she and her organization have helped to pass several laws, including California’s 1996 Swimming Pool Act, which states that all home swimming pools from 1998 on must obey safety standards for swimming pool enclosures, safety pool covers or exit alarms.

The pool safety contest is intended to bring the issue of childhood drowning to architects.

Riggsbee said she is concerned that students studying architecture are not taught how to design swimming pools that have adequate safety features for toddlers.

“My son trained as an architect and had to design a commercial pool but was taught nothing about the issue of child drowning,” Riggsbee said.

There is also concern that pool builders are unwilling to change their practices to reduce child drowning.

“When I had my pool installed, I asked the pool builder to make a fence, and he told me that he could simply put alarms on the back door and that I could then take them off. He was telling me how I could easily get around the safety laws,” said Catherine Barankin, public policy director for the competition.

Barankin added that convincing architects and pool builders to consider safety more seriously is what the competition is all about.