During summer heat waves, New Yorkers often grow restless and seek the comfort of indoor air conditioners, while those without air conditioning units find relief in whirring, rotating fans.

A century ago, the popular solution to combating summer heat was very different.

It involved collectively getting wet.

The Plus Pool project, stylized as + POOL, was an idea conceived in July 2010 by a group of designers from architectural firm Family New York and design firm Playlab, Inc. As the name partially indicates, the project is a plus sign-shaped, water-filtering Olympic-sized pool that floats on the East River. With a multi-layered filtration system in its walls that removes bacteria, contaminants, and odors, the pool can make the river water inside safe and swimmable.

In May 2021, after two years of review by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the pool received a “confirmation to proceed with due diligence,” gaining an approved spot north of the Manhattan Bridge, four blocks away from Chinatown on the East River.

It is uncertain when the construction process can begin. Architect Dong-Ping Wong, GSAPP ’06, and Managing Director Kara Meyer said that coordinating with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, City Hall, Department of Environmental Conservation, and other state partners has been a slow process.

The project is further delayed by the need for more substantial testing and prototyping, as well as improving negative public perception about swimming in the river.

“Because all of the science and engineering behind it is very new … to almost any city, we need to run a bunch of tests to prove to them that it’s as healthy, if not healthier, than a typical pool,” Wong said.

Although the proposal of the + POOL seems ambitious and innovative at first glance, the practice of urban swimming in New York City has a long-standing legacy. Beginning in 1870 and stretching into the 1970s, a number of floating pools and public bathhouses were built on the East and Hudson rivers for the public to “maintain personal hygiene, do laundry, cool off, and swim.”

But as private bathrooms became more common, the reliance on public bathhouses gradually subsided. Nearly a century later, over 90 swimming pools of different sizes and purposes could be found throughout the city. Public pools became an integral part of New York City’s urban landscape as a unique space that allowed people to get together and practice well-being.

However, these pools have been effectively lost, and new public pools have not been built since the late 1970s. In summer 2022, all pools reopened for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, but swim programs were canceled due to staffing shortages.

Does this mean that the tradition of public and urban swimming is behind us? Can architectural developments bring about a new opportunity and path to be navigated?

Wong, originally from San Diego, came to Morningside Heights in 2003 to study architecture at Columbia and later founded Family with Stănescu in 2009. The transition from working for large architecture firms to independent practice gave the designers at Family more creative freedom to imagine this speculative architecture project in the summer of 2010.

Now sitting in his New York City apartment wiping sweat off his forehead, Wong expressed that the summer heat of New York was the initial reason for the design proposal.

Instead of approaching the project from any urban, neighborhood, or technological standpoint, Wong said the drive was more personal: “Why can’t I swim in the river?” he asked.

Therefore, the mission of the + POOL is to give New Yorkers access to safe, clean, and swimmable rivers that surround them. The 9,000-square-foot + Pool is designed to hold 300 visitors and filter more than 600,000 gallons of river water per day.

The image of the + POOL against the iconic Brooklyn Bridge is striking, garnering publicity and support from the likes of Jay Z, Kanye West, and Clover Moore, the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Australia. Wong’s intuition was to design something that stood out with a very simple and understandable shape.

“I thought it was important that it didn’t look like a normal pool because it doesn’t behave like a normal pool,” he said. “You wanted people to look at it differently.”

The plus shape divides into four segments, which are naturally assigned one of four functions to accommodate different public needs. There is an Olympic-length 50-meter lap swimming section, a sports area, a lounge area, and a children’s area.

Wong originally chose the water area in front of Brooklyn Bridge to be the location of the pool, as he believes it provides the best view of New York. But after working with NYCEDC and other agencies, the new location north of Manhattan Bridge holds other benefits relevant to bordering neighborhoods. The floating pool will provide more deserved public and recreational space for lower-income neighborhoods in the area.

Davis Richardson is a current architect at REX, contributor at The Architect’s Newspaper, and co-unit leader at the Architectural Association with Christopher Gardner, GSAPP ’18, on public water and leisure. He commented that the plus shape reminds him of the shape of New York City Housing Authority public housing.

Wong envisions the pool as a long-term space to serve the community.

“I really want it to be owned basically by the city,” Wong said. ”The hope is that it’s a permanent piece of New York City and a permanent piece of public space.”

Placement is a major concern of pool construction, dating back to Robert Moses in the 1930s. Instead of distributing public pools in the junction of neighborhoods to bring different people together, Moses set them in the middle of neighborhoods, creating de facto segregation.

“I think there should be a very careful selection of sites [for + POOL] and consideration for who are the communities that are going to use this and how can we bridge communities together because their stated goal from the beginning—and I’m completely on board with—is that this is meant to be for everybody,” Richardson said.

But despite the designers’ goal to serve the entire public, the selection of locations is outside of their control. It is an inter-agency collaboration between bureaucratic sectors and developers on the waterfront.

When asked about the status of the project, Wong smiled and said that there is so much to be done before construction can begin.

“Originally we thought it would take two years,” Wong said. “I think it’s probably like year five, at least six of just the political side. So I think we’re on our third mayor since the project started. We started under Bloomberg, and then de Blasio just left and now we’re at Adams. And each time a mayor switches, we step back a little bit because we have to then work with the new administration.”

There is no existing regulatory structure for what the + POOL is proposing. For a private organization, it was already a huge success to be approved for a location, as the river is controlled by multiple public institutions.

The project could materialize in different ways: either through applying within the existing codes of the surrounding neighborhood or by crafting a new set of codes altogether, which would take many years. It involves working with health codes and the municipal administration that would provide safe and equitable access to the pool.

“It takes time. It takes a lot of patience and you want to quit every day because it’s exhausting. And it's like, is this even worth it?” Meyer said. “But that is the nature of these projects. Once you do it, then many can come after.”

The designers hope to create a new regulatory environment that can incorporate unique and new facilities. A new space such as the + POOL where this change can be safely achieved will open up opportunities for everyone who is advocating for access along the 520 miles of shorefront.

However, once it opens, another set of logistics must be overcome. Wong said that he aims to keep + Pool as free as possible so that it can be accessible to everybody. The operational costs of the pool, including keeping the swim lessons going, will be fundraised annually through the non-governmental organization Friends of + POOL.

Meyer said that they are also in the design phases of some workforce development programs. This includes the maintenance of the filtration, water quality testing, and training of local community members to learn how to become certified water quality samplers, lab technicians, and lifeguards. The current lifeguard shortage in New York means that they need to train and hire lifeguards, which provides a lucrative seasonal job opportunity for young people in the neighborhood.

“The High Line is a great model for us because it’s a city park but it has a separate nonprofit raising money so that the High Line can do things like art exhibitions or performance spaces or maintain the gardens in a way that is separate and different from any other park,” Wong said. “I think that’s operationally what we’re hoping to do.”

Columbia professor Wade McGillis at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory and Shawnee Traylor, CC '18, now a doctoral candidate at the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program, are both providing scientific advising for the + POOL.

Traylor joined the + POOL team around September 2017 and is now the Science and Technology Advisor. Her background in chemistry, environmental engineering, carbon dioxide removal, and water quality allows her to provide expertise on dissolved oxygen, pH, and how the waterways around New York function. With this expertise, Traylor can set safety measures for the pool. They will predominantly monitor for enterococcus, which is a fecal coliform bacteria indicating the potential fecal contamination of the water.

Traylor said, “I think the first step of stewardship, or conservation, is thinking it’s something that can be saved, that is worth the effort of trying to quote-unquote save, but also maintain and preserve the water quality that we already have.”

The + POOL will only filter the area immediately surrounding it, not the entire East River. As Traylor and Meyer mentioned, the pool on the river might encourage fewer people to throw trash in it or more people to actively participate in river sweeps to clean up trash along the shoreline. The hope is by educating people and creating a sense of care for the waters, people will be more personally invested in that.

“I think this kind of access to the water and feeling like the water is part of the city instead of the things separate from it, could lead to a really cool relationship with our natural surroundings,” Traylor said.

According to Traylor and Meyer, thousands of people already swim in the rivers around Manhattan every year. However, tickets for urban swimming are very expensive, some of which cost thousands of dollars to participate in, and involve risks associated with health, water currents, and boat traffic. So the science and engineering team is working with the agencies that regulate these things to decide on the ultimate filtration and treatment to provide safe, regular, and equitable access to swimming in Manhattan.

Wong’s wish is that with the + POOL, people will lose their hesitation to swim in the river.

“The initial question of ‘Why can’t I swim in the river?’ When that’s no longer a question, then I’ll see that it is very successful.” Wong said.

Unlike a majority of architectural design projects, the + POOL gained momentum due to its focus on the project’s public-facing details.

For the + POOL founders, it is thanks to initial public support—raising $314,000 from more than 4,000 people on Kickstarter—that they had the ability to pursue the project.

Meyer said, “And that is truly what + POOL has been. It is a community-driven project.”

The + POOL is not yet a reality, but it is an example of how designers can take an idea and turn it into reality based on public will. However, if it fails, the architects fear the democratic, grassroots model for tackling architectural projects might falter.

“Architects have such limited political agency as is, and I’m not super confident in our politics or politicians more broadly,” Richardson said. “I think any kind of power we can gain, any kind of agency we can gain in that realm is going to be very necessary when we look at issues of climate change and social inequity, economic inequity.”