+POOL facts for kids
Quick facts for kids +POOL |
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| Commercial? | No |
| Type of project | Public swimming pool |
| Location | East River, New York City |
| Founder | Dong-Ping Wong, Oana Stănescu, Archie Lee Coates IV, Jeffrey Franklin |
| Established | June 2010 |
| Funding | Crowdfunded via Kickstarter |
+POOL (or +Pool) is an exciting idea for a floating swimming pool in the East River in New York City. This special pool would float near the Manhattan or Brooklyn banks. What makes it unique is that it would be filled with water directly from the river, but it would clean the water first! The companies behind this project, Family New York and PlayLab, have been using the website Kickstarter to get money from people to help build it.
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How +POOL Cleans Water
The planned pool will be shaped like a plus sign and will be as big as an Olympic-sized pool. Its main goal is to clean the East River water while also giving people a fun place to swim. The design allows the pool to filter a huge amount of river water every day, about half a million gallons! It uses a special layered filtration system to make the water clean. Over a quarter of a million gallons of this cleaned river water would then fill the pool for swimming. The long-term plan is to raise about $15 million to build the whole pool.
The Story of +POOL
The +POOL team started their journey in July 2011. They raised over $41,000 on Kickstarter to test different materials for their water filters. With help from scientists at Columbia University, they found that their idea could actually work!
Building a Test Pool
In July 2013, they raised even more money, over a quarter million dollars, to build a smaller version of the floating pool. This "test lab" is like a working prototype (a first model) that helps them see how well the pool's filters work in real river conditions.
Who is Helping?
Since the idea began, many different companies and experts have joined the +POOL project. These include the engineering company Arup, the design company IDEO, environmental experts from One Nature, and the art group Storefront for Art and Architecture. Even government leaders, like New York State Senator Daniel Squadron and New York City Council Member Brad Lander, have shown interest in the project.
In November 2013, Time magazine recognized +POOL as one of the 25 best inventions of that year!
The pool was first expected to open around mid-2016. While there wasn't much visible progress that year, in April 2017, it was announced that they had partnered with Heineken to help move the project forward.
The +POOL Light Sculpture
In 2019, the creators of +POOL introduced a cool art piece called +POOL light in the East River. This sculpture was funded by groups like the National Endowment of the Arts, Heineken, and the Howard Hughes Corporation. What's special about it is that it changes colors based on how clean the river water is! Scientists from Columbia University and designers from the tech company Reaktor helped create the smart system behind it.
