If They Build It, Will You Swim?

Dong-Ping
Wong calls the East River a tease. Last summer, the 31-year-old
architect was hot and sweaty, but he decided against cooling off in a
river better known for bodies floating up rather than diving in.
Instead, he went with the clear solution: design a pool that can float
in the river. "It was summer, and we were literally looking at the river
and kind of bummed that we couldn’t use it," Wong says. "It just seemed
like a really obvious thing to try and do." A year later, Wong is
leading the team behind Pool, which would be the world’s first floating
pool to filter the water in which it floats. Working with two designers from PlayLab—Jeffrey Franklin and Archie Lee Coates—Wong
created a pool prototype that, as the name suggests, is shaped like a
plus sign. This creates four distinct pool areas: likely one for
children, sports, lounging and laps.

The pool will float in
the river with a pedestrian bridge connecting it to the shore. That
means when someone dives into Pool, they’re essentially diving into
river water. Don’t worry: It’s not as foul as it sounds. The pool’s
submerged walls are filters designed to bring the river water up to
swimming code. Wong explains it best when he says the pool is
essentially a "large strainer." Wong works on Pool from the one-room
office of his architecture firm, called Family. He has short, messy
black hair and large wire-frame glasses. Skinny jeans and a small white
T-shirt complete the look, which seems appropriate with his decision to have business and company monikers reminiscent of
the recent trend in Brooklyn bands favoring generic, unsearchable names.
Since opening Family in 2009, Wong has won international design
competitions with playful and unique renderings for environmental
projects. In May, with the assistance of PlayLab,
Family presented The Worms, neon tents that were included in the
Festival of Ideas for the New City and look like something from Norman
Foster or Frank Gehry’s offices—but more playful than pompous.

When
Curbed featured the design for Pool last summer, it sparked curiosity
among the rabid crowd of design nerds and urban-planning enthusiasts.
Like many of the site’s visually appealing renderings, though, it seemed
completely impossible. And even if it were, who would willingly wade
into the water? Well, besides a few punks who dare to be river
renegades.

But Wong
thinks everyone will want to jump in. This includes "your girlfriend,"
"your tamale guy" and "your other girlfriend." Why stop there? The
renderings for the pool even incorporate black amorphous creatures
dressed in bikinis and trunks instead of the typical stock citizens of
most renderings.

It
may seem that Pool is too funny and hip to be technically
feasible—like an idealistic hypothesis or a complex joke with an
inscrutable punch line. But then details surface, like the filtration
system that’s embedded within the pool walls. The "iodine impregnated
beads" and "100 Micron PE Filter Textile" sound legitimate. It turns
out, however, it started as not much more than a speculative fiction.

"That was what the four of us came up with, with our very limited knowledge of water filtration. We kind of compiled stuff together," Wong explains with a laugh.

Since
the site launched, Pool started working with Arup, one of the world’s
leading engineering firms, to create and build something that works.
While Pool’s design is unique, if built, it will not be New York City’s
first or only floating pool. A barge outfitted with a seven-lane pool,
locker rooms and pool house, known as Floating Pool Lady, has been
docked at Baretto Point Park in the Bronx since 2008. Because of the
strong community support behind it, the city is showing interest in
opening a second floating pool, most likely at the new Brooklyn Bridge
Park.

It was assumed that the lady behind Floating Pool Lady—former Parks Department official Ann Buttenwieser — would get the second pool, but Wong’s team also has met,
albeit informally, with the Parks Department.

The
city still has no official plans for a new floating pool, but new
citywide initiatives that have invested billions in increased waterfront
access and improved water quality could make this New York’s time for
floating pools. Again.

It’s
been over 200 years since the city’s first floating pools docked off
the Battery at the bottom of Manhattan. The first were pontoons with
slats on the bottom that allowed the pool—really more like a cage—to
fill with river water. With dressing rooms atop the pontoons, these
were luxurious getaways for the city’s elite. But in 1915, the Health
Department closed most of them down because of sewage seeping into the
rivers. Five remained open with a slight adjustment; instead of filling
up directly with dirty river water, the pools were enclosed and the
water was poured in. One assumes these were occasionally cleaned. Robert
Moses moved these pools to the West Side, but they were all ultimately
taken out as the city built new pools on land.

Buttenwieser uncovered the city’s floating pool history while doing research for her
thesis at Columbia University. She spent the next 27 years working to
bring them back. After fundraising, lobbying local government officials
and starting The Neptune Foundation, the floating pool non-profit
organization, she sailed Lady to its first port of call in 2007, the
undeveloped Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Lady
was only in Brooklyn for one season because Buttenwieser never received
the necessary permits. Lady was then sent up to the Bronx to mitigate
some backlash over the area’s new waste water treatment plant. Working
with the city, The Neptune Foundation was able to get the proper state
permits. Buttenwieser then gave the pool to the New York City Parks
Department.

Since
arriving, Floating Pool Lady has attracted 30,000 swimmers each summer
and has been celebrated by politicians, including Mayor Bloomberg, who
jumped in the pool with neighborhood children on opening day.

Wong
admits that Floating Pool Lady’s success inspired him, and he set up a
meeting with Buttenwieser last fall. The conversation was cordial, but
no plans were made to synchronize pools. Buttenwieser claims she’s not
working on a new pool and reiterates there’s no competition between the
teams, but she notes the Pool team has been very guarded about its
design.

"I have no
relationship with them, they won’t even tell me what they’re doing,"Buttenwieser  says. "They are very, very cagey about what this big secret
is going to be."

If
it follows the basic design of Floating Pool Lady, a floating barge
with filtered water, then this new pool and Pool are essentially
updated versions of the city’s first floating pools. The spa’s pine
slats are now transformed into high-tech seven-layered filtration walls,
and the bathhouse barge has been transformed into a sanitary and
recreational pool.

Both
groups hope that the next generation of floating pools will blur the
socioeconomic lines of the first pools. When Floating Pool Lady was in
posh Brooklyn Heights, it attracted swimmers from various neighborhoods
in the city and 175 zip codes. While Pool’s hip design and website seem
geared toward a more affluent and younger generation, it will be a
public pool that Wong expects will have a universal appeal.

If Pool
is ultimately built and approved by the city, New Yorkers might need
some convincing to use it. As we know from past experience, a design may
be cutting-edge or cool, but it’s still a public pool. Even within the
filter walls, people would still be swimming in river
water, though it’s possible it will be chlorinated. So to get people in the rivers, the perception of these waterways
must change from Law & Order’s liquid graveyard into something more amenable to swimming.

One
New Yorker who needs no convincing is Morty Berger, founder of NYC
Swim. For the past 17 years, he has organized swims around Manhattan in
water he says is "fantastic." He thinks the stigma of the water as
dirty, dark and dangerous is slowly shifting, at least among those who
voluntarily jump in.

Berger
says that when he first started NYC Swim, everyone’s first question was
about the water quality. Today they ask more about the physical
requirements for swimming in rivers with strong currents. For Morty, the
fear—or disregard—of the rivers will wane once New Yorkers have a
reason to be excited about what it can offer. For NYC Swim, that means
leading swims under the Brooklyn Bridge and around the Statue of
Liberty. "It’s about putting out a quality product," he says.

Wong hopes to
provide New Yorkers with another one of these products. There are ways
for New Yorkers to get in the rivers, whether it’s NYC Swim or kayaking
in Newtown Creek, but Pool hopes to attract more than the outdoor
enthusiasts and nautically brave. Beyond the technical and permitting
challenges for Pool, Wong is working against the water’s bad rep.

The
dead bodies are largely urban legend anyway, and the water is much
cleaner than most would expect. The Department of Environmental
Protection says the rivers are usually at or above swimming code. That
means fecal coliform levels are below the "bathing limit." These levels
spike after heavy rainfall, which causes sewage overflow. To get people
swimming in the rivers without anxiety this must be fixed, since the
words "bathing" and "fecal" can’t be anywhere near each other. Luckily
for Wong and any fan of clean water, Bloomberg’s $3.3 billion Vision
2020 invests heavily in improving waste water infrastructure.

But
no matter how clean the rivers get, there will always be hesitation
about swimming in it. "Half the battle is obviously dealing with those
[bacteria] spikes, engineering-wise and filtration-wise, but the other
issue is to psychologically get people comfortable with the idea of
swimming in the river," Wong says. "I think even if we tell people 60 to
70 percent of the time it’s clean enough, maybe today there is a green
flag, people aren’t necessarily going to jump into the river."

Buttenwieser realized this when she tried bringing Floating Pool Lady to
Williamsburg the year before it docked in Brooklyn Heights. She expected
community support for her ecological plan to fill the pool with river
water that was filtered offsite. But it wasn’t quite so simple.

"I
said to the community, ‘How would you like us to use the water from the
river and we can recycle it?’ And they went ballistic," Buttenwieser
explains. "’You have two sewer outputs—at Kent Street and [Greenpoint
Avenue]—and no way will we swim in this if you use river water.’"
Bloomberg’s Vision 2020 may help change the way we see—and hopefully
use—the water. The mayor’s optimistic enough to predict that New Yorkers
will be jumping off piers directly into the rivers within the next 10
years.

Maybe, maybe
not, since the problems with sewage and bacteria are only some of the
dangers posed to New York City swimmers. Since New York was called New
Amsterdam, the East River and Hudson River have been working rivers. The
strong currents make them great for shipping and industry, but not yet
for leisure. And if there weren’t boats and barges, the water would
still be cold and dark. That’s enough to keep the majority of New
Yorkers from donning a swimsuit and cooling off in the river during
their lunch break.

For
most, the rivers are not much more than polluted
boundaries—inconveniences on the morning commute. "You’re either always
passing over it, or passing under it or looking at it as a wall of some
kind," Wong says.

With
new waterfront esplanades, Bloomberg hopes to bring us closer to our
rivers, but it will take more than narrow strips of green to cover up
Manhattan’s expressway skin. Last summer, the East River Park opened
near my apartment, and while the trees and grass make for a nice place
to run along the water, it’s hard not to notice the industrial scars
left from earlier urban planners.

Floating
Pool Lady and Pool can’t change the currents or clean the rivers, but
they can show our water’s potential for leisure; they open up what
Bloomberg is calling the "sixth borough."

"If
we got people to swim in the rivers," Wong says, "it would just be that
one small step to get people understanding that the rivers are not that
scary."

As the
city moves away from its industrial and shipping roots, so too can the
rivers. Like the Waterfront Vision, Pool may not be entirely feasible
at the moment, but at the very least, it presents the rivers as an urban
asset once again.

Wong
knows the challenges before him are significant. Getting Pool into the
water will take phenomenal amounts of engineering and fundraising—as
well as wading through bureaucratic channels— which Wong readily admits
he does not currently possess. If he can get past these challenges, and
the city approves it, New Yorkers may start to understand that the
rivers aren’t so bad. The pool—and the rivers themselves—can become a
new icon for the city.

For
all of the engineering and design work put into Pool, the project
began with a simple sentiment that is posed as a question on its
website: "Wouldn’t a pool be nice right now?" In the heat of summer most
will say yes, even if that pool is public and floating in a creepy
river.

And if Pool
is never more than an interesting hypothesis, Wong can always cool off
in the Floating Pool Lady. And if that’s too crowded, he can try jumping
right into the East River, knowing it’s not as terrifying as he once
imagined. And he might not be swimming alone.