The Chadwell Project
Kelly Jennings, Designer & Project Manager
Chadwell · Roswell
The pool that started with someone else, and the ten years that followed.
The Chadwell project in Roswell began mid-build with another contractor. The Chadwells called Atlantis unhappy with the work in progress. Atlantis tore out the half-built pool and started over, turning a small freeform plan into an elaborate linear modern pool with a vanishing edge and a pool house. The relationship has continued for more than ten years since.
The brief.
Most Atlantis projects start on paper, with a site visit and a blank slate. This one didn't: the Chadwells had already started building a small, freeform pool with another contractor when they called Atlantis, unhappy with the work in progress. We won't characterize that contractor here; what happened next is plain enough. The Chadwells asked Atlantis to take over a project already underway, mid-construction, with someone else's partial work already in the ground.
The site.
Taking over a half-built pool is a different kind of site analysis than starting from bare ground: an existing excavation, an existing shell in some state of progress, and an existing plan the homeowners no longer wanted. Before Bruce and Kelly could design anything new, they had to assess what was actually there, not what a fresh survey would show on an untouched lot. The decision was to tear out the half-built pool, not patch it or build around it, and start over on a site already disturbed once by somebody else's plan.
The design response.
The homeowners' original plan was a small, freeform pool. What Kelly designed instead was an elaborate linear modern pool with a vanishing edge and a pool house, a real shift from a compact, informal shape to a precise, architectural one. A vanishing edge is not a small decision: it changes the engineering, the water management, and the whole visual relationship between the pool and the ground beyond it. Pairing it with a linear modern pool and a pool house turns this backyard into a considered, whole-environment design, not a rescue job finished as cheaply and quickly as possible.
Watch the evening arrive.
The build.
Rebuilding from a half-finished start is not the same job as building on a clean site, and it is worth being honest about that rather than glossing over it. What we know for certain is the outcome: the Chadwells did not settle for a finished version of the plan they walked away from. They ended up with a different, more elaborate pool.
The result.
The finished backyard is a linear modern pool with a vanishing edge and a pool house, photographed at twilight with its glass-tile spillway lit against a brick estate. It is one of the calmest images in the Atlantis portfolio, and the story behind it is one of the most complicated: a homeowner who started with someone else, and ended up somewhere better, still calling ten years later. That is the real measure of this project, not the tear-out, not even the vanishing edge. It's the fact that a decade on, the Chadwells are still an Atlantis relationship, not a one-time transaction that happened to go well.