Core77

This weekend a 7 year journey will reach a milestone with the arrival in NY harbor of the Floating Pool, a mobile recreational facility built to serve urban neighborhoods. The project was commissioned by The Neptune Foundation, a not-for-profit organization headed by Ann Buttenwieser. The floating pool, designed by architect Jonathan Kirschenfeld, is an unusual swimming pool facility built within a river barge.

The Pool complex is a self-contained facility that can be ‘plugged-into’ any waterfront site, acting as a migrating recreation pier. The Pool will serve neighborhoods which otherwise lack direct access to public pool facilities. The locker rooms, showers, and snack bar are collected around a raised sun court and dining terrace overlooking the pool. The current project is a new version of the 'floating baths' that used to dot the piers of NYC in the late 19th and early 20th centurys. These were floating rectangular structures with bath houses and offices on the perimeter and a center hollow lined with slats allowing the water to flow through and creating a place to bathe and swim. The new Floating Pool will be a self contained 25 meter, seven lane pool that can accomodate up to 174 swimmers at a time.

The Floating Pool is being tugged from Louisiana into New York Harbor for final outfitting in Brooklyn, and the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation hopes to open the Pool to the public in Summer 2007 or 2008. The Floating Pool has been designed to create a lively, unexpected urban space. The foundation hopes that this example will help other communities reconnect with their waterfronts.