Big news for everyone who wants to swim in a giant floating pool in the East River. (So that's everyone.) The team behind +Pool just positioned Float Lab, the "mini, temporary and floating science-lab version of + Pool's filtration system," into its spot at Pier 40 along the Hudson. The three-bucketed platform began its journey on Monday with a dip into New Jersey's Morris Canal via a giant boat mover, crane, and forklift, only to be tugged across the Hudson to its short-term home. It's the first time the zany idea has had a physical manifestation beyond renderings, so all those Kickstarter donors must be psyched, too. Soon, the lab will start to collect water-quality data in order to see if the technology for filtering the surrounding H20 into something swimmable inside the tank actually works.
The Float Lab, constructed over the last several months, is a partnership between a crazy huge number of organizations: naval architects at Persak & Wurmfeld, engineers at Arup, fabricators at Olollo, Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, CUNY students, Riverkeeper, River Project, and the Hudson River Park Trust. Materials are via specialists at Macworth Environmental and, a rep adds, "the generosity of Dynamic Rubber." So what's next? They're still fundraising, and reps report:
The next few weeks will be spent with ... making sure Float Lab is working how it should. We'll be monitoring all aspects of the filtration system, as well as the quality of the river itself. Expect more updates from the +Pool team on Earth Day, April 22.
· +Pool [official; Facebook; Twitter; Instagram]
· East River Floating Pool Offers Early Access to Backers [Curbed]
· All +Pool coverage [Curbed]
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