The "Plus pool“, a floating pool in New York's East River, designed by creative studio PlayLab, has received the green light to proceed with planning.
The non-profit organization +Pool has spent the last 10 years developing the technology behind this mega pool, and raising money to test prototypes. It has now received “official confirmation to proceed with due diligence” by the Economic Development Corporation of New York, and is free to proceed with the next stage of logistics planning.
What is the Plus Pool, a “cleaning” pool?
The project is very interesting and responds to many of the needs that the future requires. First of all, overturn the concept of "low impact": an installation or a place must be designed to have a "high impact" on the environment, but of a positive nature. And this special “+” shaped pool can filter up to 500.000 liters of river water every day.
Its special shape will allow it to host various activities: in its length, it will be an Olympic-sized swimming pool: the two remaining "pieces" will be a swimming pool for adults and a swimming pool for children.
A troubled swimming pool
The plans of the Plus Pool had stalled due to the pandemic, but now they will continue fast, according to the designers. The pool assignment location is north of the Manhattan Bridge. It will be special: Quite a few people will be able to swim every day as the mega facility cleans up the waters of the East River.
Plus Pool engineers used software developed by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), US Environmental Protection Agency, to model a special membrane filtration system. Barriers around the floating pool will filter water from the saltwater estuary that divides Manhattan and Brooklyn.
There is a need to work on water
Water quality is a gigantic concern, especially in a country like the United States. A law, the Clean Water Act of 1972, mitigated the problem somewhat, but the truth is that tens of billions of gallons of rainwater contaminated by wastewater they still end up in rivers like the East River through old sewer systems.
In 2019 PlayLab floated an installation (always in the shape of a plus) which in some way "foreshadowed" the swimming pool. The big LED plus changed color based on the quality of the water in the East River. Needless to say, it will have remained red for quite a while, given the river's poor swimmability.
