+Pool finally gets the go ahead in Manhattan

PlayLab and Family’s design for +POOL has been approved by Manhattan city planners 10 years after it was first proposed.

+POOL has been given official permission to proceed with due diligence in the Two Bridges neighbourhood of Lower Manhattan, and completion is expected within two years.

Manhattan’s +Pool should be completed within two years.

The open-air, plus-shaped saltwater pool will clean the water of the East River without chemicals. Each day, more than 600,000 gallons will be filtered by barriers around the pool to create a safe place to swim while purifying the river.

+POOL is four pools in one - a kid’s pool, sports pool, lap pool and lounge pool. Areas can be combined to form an olympic length lap pool, or a 9,000 square-foot pool for play. The maximum pool capacity is 300, so designers anticipate it will serve 50,000 swimmers each month. At 200x200 feet, “it’s universally recognisable shape and unusual offshore siting immediately position +POOL as an iconic piece of public infrastructure.”

“Like a giant strainer dropped in the river,” +POOL filters river water within its walls, removing bacteria, contaminants and odours, and leaving safe and swimmable water that meets local and state standards.

One of the early renders for the project - before the exact location was decided.

The East River is a saltwater tidal estuary dividing Manhattan and Brooklyn, and while the water quality has improved since the 1972 passing of the Clean Water Act, there are still billions of gallons of stormwater contaminated with sewage flowing into the river each year via the old combined sewer overflow system.

Despite Manhattan being surrounded by water, New Yorkers haven’t been able to swim in it for decades. +POOL aims to clean the river piece by piece, and change the way residents view their rivers. This will be the first time since 1938 New Yorkers have been able to swim directly in their river.

Early planning drawings for the +Pool project.

“+POOL strives to reclaim the river as a recreational resource for the city,” say PlayLab, “while educating the public about issues affecting our water quality.”

+POOL have engineered a filtration system that brings raw river water to an acceptable microbiological standard for swimming, and patented the design. The team used the US Environmental Protection Agency’s water quality modelling software (Water Quality Analysis Simulation Program 8.1) to model the system and determine it was possible to guarantee +POOL’s water quality without the use of chemical disinfectants.

Another early render, again not location specific.

The non-profit Friends of +POOL supports its development and maintenance, but also promotes water stewardship, educates the public about the importance of clean water, and supports the preservation, restoration and conservation of natural bodies of water. The organisation spent 10 years developing the technology and raising funds to test prototypes of the pool, and the citizen-led Tile by Tile fundraiser is still going strong.