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The Omnibus Roundup – NYC Solar Map, +Pool, Urban Camping, City Glimpses and More

Urban Omnibus — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 21:42:02 +0000

LIDAR imagery showing solar potential of NYC buildings | Image via stateoftheplanet

NYC SOLAR MAP
A new interactive map was launched by New York City Solar America City Partnership, led by Sustainable CUNY, to show the potential NYC has for solar panel placement. Showing both existing solar photo voltaic (PV) panels and solar thermal installations in NYC, the map also gives an estimate of solar PV potential for every rooftop in the five boroughs. The map allows users to assess any building’s solar panel capacity and estimate a financial payback. Created by gathering imagery and data using LIDAR technology, Inhabitat reports that the map shows that 66.4% of all buildings in the city are suitable for panels, and could generate up to 5,847 megawatts of power. To put this in perspective, the city currently outputs 6.5 megawatts of solar energy. The map represents opportunities for building owners to assess solar capacity on their rooftop for free. See Inhabitat’s piece on the map here, and to find out your building’s solar potential, check out the new NYC Solar Map.

1,000 Nike+ runners in NYC | Image via Cooper Smith

RUNNING IN NEW YORK: MAPS
Graphic design student Cooper Smith developed a striking series to visualize the location, route popularity and time of day people run in New York City. The series was produced for an SVA course with visionary designer Nicholas Felton using the Nike+ GPS-synced mobile app. By geolocating 1,000 runners’ paths, Smith produced beautifully mapped stills and time-lapse videos showing multiple facets of New York runners’ paths. See Infosthetic’s piece on the topic and the full work here.

Underground construction on the 7 Line | Image via MTAPhotos on Flickr

7 TRAIN EXTENSION
Official MTA photographer Patrick Cashin caught some beautiful shots of subterranean work currently underway on the 7 train’s extended line. The extension is expected to be complete in three years, after which passengers will be able to reach 11th Avenue and 34th Street. See the full Patrick Cashin slideshow on Flickr.

9/11 MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM UPDATE
The Architect’s Newspaper reported on developments around the much anticipated opening of the World Trade Center 9/11 Memorial and Museum scheduled for the tenth anniversary of the tragedy this coming September. The new complex will feature a subterranean museum and memorial space, an aboveground museum pavilion and a landscaped plaza with reflecting pools in the footprints of the Twin Towers. However, due to serious security concerns, a temporary ring of chain link fences and concrete barriers will limit public access to 1500 people at a time. After September 12th, visitors will be required to buy a ticket and pass through a series of metal detectors and x-ray machines in order to enter the plaza. Eventually security measures will be moved into the museum itself, but for the time being, security features trump accessible open space.

Artist’s rendering of +Pool | Image via +Pool

SWIM IN THE EAST RIVER?
Brooklyn designers Dong-Ping Wong of Family and Archie Lee Coates IV and Jeffrey Franklin of PlayLab have launched a Kickstarter campgain around their latest project +Pool, a project to build a floating pool in the East River, similar to Berlin’s famed Badeschiff. The designers have developed a comprehensive plan with engineering/design/planning firm ARUP and other experts to help make the pool a reality. The proposed pool will filter river water through its wall to remove bacteria, contaminants and odors, making it swimmable and safe by City standards. Four pools (Children’s pool, Lap pool, Lounge Pool and Sports Pool) will join together to create a giant plus sign in the East River. Their latest round of fundraising will support the physical testing of the proposed filtration system. See the full project description here. To read up on floating pool ideas UO has covered in the past, see Jonathan Kirschenfeld and Ann Buttenweiser’s take on the topic.

NATION’S LARGEST URBAN CAMPSITE IN BROOKLYN
According to a recent press release from the National Parks Service, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has announced that the nation’s largest urban campground will be established at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, a former airport used by Amelia Earhart and Howard Hughes. The park’s current five campsites will be expanded to 90 over the next two years, and may eventually reach 600. Special outreach to underserved communities around the area will introduce families to camping skills and equipment in their home neighborhoods and will facilitate participation in overnight use, complete with campfire programs, kayaking and swimming opportunities.

EVENTS + TO DOs:

New York City in 2040 Image via Interboro Partners (left) and Amsterdam in 2040, Image via Space&Matter (right)

GLIMPSES of New York and Amsterdam: 2040
The Center for Architecture has teamed up with the Amsterdam Center for Architecture (ARCAM) to present “Glimpses of New York and Amsterdam in 2040,” a new exhibit showcasing visions of the future for two cities that share an extensive waterfront and similar climate challenges. The organizations commissioned architects and landscape architects in both cities to conceptualize the “future of the future,” with five basic necessities for living: breathing, eating, making, moving and dwelling. The exhibit features five firms from each city: New York’s dlandstudio, Interboro Partners, Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (SO-IL), W Architecture & Landscape Architecture, and WORKac, and Amsterdam’s Barcode Architects, DELVA Landscape Architects / Dingeman Deijs Architect, Fabrications, Space & Matter and van Bergen Kolpa. GLIMPSES will be shown through September 10th at the Center for Architecture, 536 LaGuardia Place. Read Inhabitat’s coverage of the exhibit or, for more information, see the official site.

COME OUT & PLAY NEW YORK
Come Out and Play, the annual festival of citywide street games, will begin on June 19th and run until July 16th. In years past, the festival has “turned New York City into a playground for a weekend,” with satellite city festivals held in San Francisco and Amsterdam. This year, Come Out and Play will begin in Lower Manhattan in partnership with the River to River Festival. Come Out and Play will run the series over the summer, culminating in a one-day field day in mid-July on Governors Island. For more information, see the official site.

GRANT OPPORTUNITIES
The Awesome Foundation is offering multiple $1,000 grants each month to “people devoted to forwarding the interest of awesomeness in the universe.” Although no New York City projects have been funded as of yet, the NYC Chapter is now accepting applications. To apply, click here.

Sappi has announced a call for entries for grants up to $50,000 with the “Ideas that Matter Grant Program.” Ideas that Matter is open to individual designers, design firms, agencies, in-house corporate design departments, design instructors, and individual design students and design student groups. To apply for an Ideas that Matter Grant, click here. The deadline to apply is July 15th.

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The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

The Omnibus Roundup – Floating Pool returns, citywide car-share, sewer cleaning and woolly gardens

Urban Omnibus — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:50:53 +0000

Photo by Philippe Baumann

Summer is just around the corner and that means outdoor movies, lazy days in the park, ice cream — and some sweltering heat. It isn’t always easy to escape from climbing temperatures. New York City only has 54 public pools for its 8 million plus residents and with only 50 of those open this summer, many will not be able to take advantage of the facilities. But for some Bronx residents, relief has returned via tugboat. The Floating Pool Lady – a barge turned floating pool, familiar to Omnibus readers from our conversations with founder Ann Buttenwieser and designer Jonathan Kirschenfeld – made the trip back to Barretto Point Park earlier this week. The pool has anchored in Hunts Point during the summer months since 2008 and will open this year on June 29th.

Hoboken, which is where Zipcar made its debut in New Jersey, officially launched the first citywide car-sharing program today. “Corner Cars,” in partnership with Hertz, is starting out with 42 cars in 21 locations throughout the one-mile-square city. 40% of residents rely on cars to commute to work but a higher percentage own one and parking spots are at a premium. The city hopes that the car-sharing program will have multiple benefits – reduce car ownership amongst residents, promote pedestrian safety by reducing the number of cars parked too close to pedestrian crossings, and produce revenue for the city itself as Hertz is paying $100 a month for each space in the program. Many other cities, including New York, are very interested in the data that comes out of this program, in hopes that it might prove to be a replicable model.

New York City has more than 7,400 miles of sewer lines and keeping them clear (and preventing overflow) is a major undertaking. As of this past Wednesday, the city has two new powerhouse vacuum cleaners to help with the challenge: diesel trucks that snake into the sewer system and can remove up to three tons of sewage and extraneous debris in a day. The first two trucks are working 5 days per week to remove clogs (identified by sonar technology and video cameras) from the largest of the city’s lines and two more machines will be added to the effort next year.

Earlier this week we brought you a recap of the Institute for Urban Design’s symposium “Rebuilding a Sustainable Haiti.” Tonight at 7pm (go now!), Christina Ray is hosting “Konbit Shelter,” an artist talk and benefit for Haiti with artists and collaborators Swoon and Benjamin Wolf. Swoon and Wolf recently visited Haiti, and will discuss their trip as well as plans for a rebuilding workshop in Haitian communities this summer. All artwork on display at the gallery is on sale and benefiting the Konbit Shelter project, which is looking to introduce the Superadobe building technique to local builders in Haiti. (And stay tuned for more Swoon on Urban Omnibus in the fourth installment of our series of artist interviews, coming soon.)

There are a few other events coming up next week. On June 22nd, Storefront for Art and Architecture is hosting a book launch for Ecological Urbanism, which explores sustainable design issues within existing and new cities. Also that night, Connie Fishman, president of the Hudson River Park Trust, will be speaking at the new Battery Park City Library about the planning, problems and progress of constructing Hudson River Park.

While you’re out enjoying the weekend, keep your eyes open for unexpected pockets of flowers courtesy of the Woolly School Garden. Yesterday we enjoyed one of their installations outside of Omnibus headquarters. It did, as promised by the notes attached to the plants, brighten our day.

Broadway between Houston and Prince. Photo by Varick Shute.

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

The Omnibus Roundup – Beaux Arts Ball, meet-ups, Floating Pool, billyburg walks

Urban Omnibus — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:23:57 +0000

Welcome to a very out-and-about edition of the Roundup. Who says life slows down in the summer?

Tomorrow night come rage with us at the Architectural League’s Beaux Arts Ball at Omnibus home base The Old American Can Factory (tickets still on sale!). Why? Take your pick: open studios by Can Factory artists-in-residence (visit us in the Omnibus office in room A218), DIY collaborative manufacturing in The Factory, dancing ’til the wee hours with DJ Chris Annibell/Afrokinetic, food by the Vendy-award-winning Dosa Man (we’re all about the street vendor love) and Brooklyn favorite Blue Marble Ice Cream, and a very cool lighting installation by Wingspace Theatrical Design. And, last but not least, because all proceeds support the League, our beloved parent organization.

Next up on the calendar, on Tuesday the 9th, is our second meet-up, this time in the Bronx for a walking tour of the Grand Concourse with our friends at the Design Trust for Public Space and WNYC’s Cityscapes. If you can’t make the tour, bring some food and drink and come by for the Public Space Potluck.

Maybe you’re more in the mood for some super-fun Superfund knowledge. Back at the Can Factory again, this time on the evening of June 15, we’re working with our friends at the Center for Urban Pedagogy and XO Projects to explore the issues surrounding this contentious debate. Artist Brooke Singer and historian Sarah Vogel will discuss the history of the Superfund program, the politics of designation, and the changing legal definitions of toxins, risk, and responsibility.

The League is on board with our enthusiasm for the Floating Pool. Next Thursday, Jonathan Kirschenfeld will be presenting the project as part of the League’s 2009 New York Designs lecture series. Speaking of floating structures, if you like them for recreation, would you consider water-based living?

If the thought of braving the crowds in Times and Herald Squares on a weekday afternoon unnerves you, how about Vanderbilt or Bedford Ave.? Sunday afternoons in June, enjoy car-free Vanderbilt Ave. (music! ice cream! skateboarding!), or head to Bedford for Williamsburg Walks on Saturday afternoons (friendly neighborhood organizations! rhubarb workshops! sock puppets!) both starting this weekend. Next weekend Jackson Heights joins the fun with the 78th Street Play Street.

Still looking for more activities? Yesterday Shumi gave us the skinny on West Harlem’s new waterfront park. Break out your fishing poles on June 13th if you’re looking for an excuse to go visit it yourself. Or, if you can’t get enough of life around the 7 train, the fun doesn’t stop with ecology: Jump on board for Queens Art Express ’09. And The Putting Lot opens this weekend!

By the way (if you haven’t already heard), it’s official: Gehry’s out as designer of the Atlantic Yards arena, but that doesn’t mean he’s gone from the project completely. It looks like the little bird whispering in Alec’s ear knows his stuff. That just might merit a new chapter in the production of Brooklyn at Eye Level.

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about. Image: 2008 Beaux Arts Ball, The Architectural League of New York, photo by David Malosh

The Floating Pool: Ann Buttenwieser

Urban Omnibus — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:15:44 +0000

Click on any image to launch a slideshow of images of the Floating Pool. | Photo © Philippe Baumann

Ann Buttenwieser drew her inspiration for the Floating Pool from the public baths that dotted New York City’s waterfront in the 19th century, and then projected that vision into a contemporary amenity for underserved communities. After years of planning and development, in 1999 she found an equally enthusiastic partner in Jonathan Kirschenfeld, whose interest in waterfront use had led him to design a (yet-unrealized) 600-seat floating theater. Design of the project continued until 2004, when Kent Merrill, the naval architect working with Buttenwieser and Kirschenfeld, located a decommissioned river barge for sale in Louisiana. Shipyard construction on the Floating Pool began in Amelia, Louisiana in 2005, and after narrowly avoiding devastating damage from Hurricane Katrina, the barge made its 10-day trip to Pier 2 in Brooklyn in October 2006. The Pool docked there for retrofitting and final design until its opening on July 4, 2007 at Brooklyn Bridge Park. In 2008, the pool moved on to Barretto Point Park in the South Bronx, the only community district in New York without access to a public pool, where it will return for the next two summers.

Interview with Ann Buttenwieser, The Neptune Foundation
Founder of the Floating Pool

What was the initial concept for the floating pool?
In 1870, Boss Tweed, under the Public Works Department, created five floating pools. There was even a captain in charge. Each summer there was a parade – it was an event! – when the captain led a pool flotilla from the Bronx down to the sites for the opening. Then around the turn of the century, when we had five borough presidents all of a sudden, the pools were turned over from the Public Works Department to the Borough Presidents’ offices. By 1915 there were fifteen pools, with bottoms open to the river water, and slats to keep people from falling out. People felt that there were health benefits from being in the salt air and swimming in the salt water. You got better, you felt better.

Milstein Division, The New York Public Library

These “floating baths,” as they were called, were placed around the city in the tenement areas — the Lower East Side, Hell’s Kitchen, the South Bronx, some areas of Brooklyn, I think there was one in the German district [in Yorkville]. They were created to provide a place for people without running water in their homes to be cleansed. They were pontoon structures — they floated on top of the water like a catamaran. The baths were completely enclosed by a rectangular structure that held dressing rooms. They were not anchored, they were attached to existing piers — recreation piers, commercial piers. They were stored in the winter in the Bronx at Classon Point, which, curiously, is around the bend from where the floating pool was this past summer in the South Bronx. It was as if it came home.

In 1915, the Health Department tested the hygiene of the river water in the floating pools. They put dye in a sewer on the Lower East Side and it came out in one of the pools at Battery Park, and turned the water pink! So they promptly closed the pools down. They retrofitted five of the pools, put a solid bottom in them and then filled them with city water now flowing from the Croton aqueduct. I have no idea what happened to the remaining pools. At some point, I’m not sure when exactly, all were taken over by the Parks Department. When Robert Moses was running the Parks Department, he took the last three that were still running and put them outside of Riverside Park when he was building the West Side Highway. It was sort of a sop to the community that was not able to get access to the waterfront.

The point of this was to reconnect New Yorkers with the water and the fact that they lived on an island city. … They could see the land, feel the water, and see the water.When did you decide to bring floating pools back to New York?
I was working at the city’s Economic Development Corporation, helping people like Roland Betts get his Chelsea Piers project started, and generally trying to help people get through the system. Jonathan Kirschenfeld called and said he had this idea for a floating theater, and asked where he had to go to get permits and such. I talked him through that, he got all the permits and secured a space down at Battery Park but he wasn’t able to raise the money to actually build it.

Meanwhile, in 1980, I wrote an Op-Ed piece for The New York Times about the floating baths. They printed it on Memorial Day with a Jacob Riis picture of one. I figured if the Times thinks this a good idea then it should be done. So from 1980 to 2000 — I was working on waterfront projects, in the Parks Department, and with the EDC throughout that time — whenever I went to a community meeting or a meeting about the waterfront and everybody was talking about putting up an amphitheater (amphitheaters were de rigeur in waterfront design at the time), I said, “How about a floating pool?” Wherever I went, I talked about this crazy idea of mine. It was motherhood. So when I was working at the Parks Department I convinced their Concessions Office to issue an RFP for a floating pool alongside park property. But the RFP was written in a way so that it would be financially impossible to do it. No developer bid on it.

In 2000, I quit my last job and decided to build the floating pool. The first thing I had to do was to get a charter for a not-for-profit, the Neptune Foundation, which enabled me to start raising money. Kent Barwick got me a grant to do a feasibility study, which required collaboration with an architect. Kent suggested Jonathan Kirschenfeld, and I thought – Oh my God, he’s back!

So Jonathan did the feasibility study and I started raising money. We hired a naval architect, because we were now dealing with something that was outside of Jonathan’s expertise, and they worked together.

We figured it was going to cost $250,000 to buy a used barge. By the time we got drawings and were ready to purchase, the price of barges was just horrendous — the cheapest we could find was a million dollars. (I think that this was before we had drawings. We just set out to see what the cost would be.) So the naval architect and Jonathan sat down to plan how to build one from scratch, assuming the cost wouldn’t be higher than the purchase costs cited. We pursued that for six months or so, but when we went out to bid on steel, the building booms in China and New York had begun, so the price of steel had skyrocketed. We discovered that the cost of building a barge would be two million dollars, so we went back to the drawing board and it just so happened that a lot of barges had been dumped on the market because single hull vessels were no longer allowed in commerce. We were finally able to buy one for $250,000.

Did you want elements of the design of this pool to echo the 19th century baths in any way, or was the inspiration in concept only?
No, I did not want it to echo the floating baths because I had actually gone to Paris to see the Piscine Delunay (which I’m not sure exists anymore, I think it may have been rebuilt). It was a similar concept, with the pool in the middle and with the dressing rooms around it so you were entirely enclosed and you didn’t see you were on the water. You could have been anywhere. The point of Neptune’s pool was to reconnect New Yorkers with the water and the fact that they lived on an island city. We wanted it to be as open as possible, so people could be in the water in the water, so to speak, and be able to see out and understand that there was a view behind them. They could see the land, feel the water, and see the water.

How did the design reflect issues of site selection and infrastructural requirements?
The problem in New York is that despite the fact that everything is on the water, there is no such thing as connections to the upland. We were very lucky in Brooklyn because we went to the old Brooklyn piers and they all had electricity and sanitation and water connections we could hook up to. But other locations posed real problems. For example, Hudson River Park has a historic wall, which you are not allowed to penetrate. The infrastructure just isn’t there, beyond some electric wires now on the piers for lighting. In the Bronx we were very fortunate because the Department of Environmental Protection needed to expand its waste treatment plant, which required mitigation, so they paid for putting in the infrastructure for the pool.

What kinds of jurisdictional issues did you have to battle with?
If I hadn’t worked for the city for so many years I couldn’t have done it. There’s no question. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said the pool was a structure, and therefore we had to get a permit from them. They fined the Neptune Foundation $20,000 for being in Brooklyn in 2007. On the other hand the Coast Guard said we were a vessel and thus required certification from them. When we were in Brooklyn I had to get a permit from the Empire State Development Corporation to be there, and then establish an agreement with the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy for them to run the pool. It went on and on and on. There were also insurance issues — noone had created insurance policies for floating pools before, so all kinds of questions were raised about kids falling overboard and such. The Parks Department still feels that Jonathan didn’t put the fences up high enough.

Are there more floating pools coming in the future?
I would love to do more. I do not have the ability to raise any more money – that’s the problem. I’m just hoping that the folks in Brooklyn will decide that they would like to have one as part of Brooklyn Bridge Park. There is such a wonderful community there and they are dying to have that pool come back.

What is next for the existing pool?
It is going back to New Jersey for the winter, because the DEC permit requires it to leave New York State, but it will return next summer to the South Bronx. The permit is for three years there and is renewable. But what the city will decide to do then, I don’t know — there might be demand someplace else. (The pool was given to the city as a gift in June.)

Do you plan on being involved in future site selection, after these three years in the Bronx?
Oh I hope so.

There has been a lot of attention paid recently to the waterfront, whether for leisure uses, greenways, public art installations, private development, etc. You have watched this evolution throughout your career. What are your thoughts on the direction of such developments? Do you see this increased attention as a direct result of the hard work of people like yourself?
Yes, people like me, and people like Kent Barwick who dedicated extraordinary amounts of time and effort to the cause while at the Waterfront Alliance. Mine was more of an area-by-area approach and his was really a regional approach. But we both fought tooth and nail to get things going. Difficult issues arise endlessly on the waterfront. What should be there? Should it be housing? Should it be parks? How are you going to pay for the parks?

But I believe the turning point was when Governor Pataki finally put money into Hudson River Park. That was after an awful lot of pressure from the environmentalists, the “parkies.” Once Hudson River Park was under way, I continued to work my way south. I was working for the Downtown Alliance to do a master plan for the Lower Manhattan waterfront so we could connect Hudson River Park, Battery Park, Battery Park City, and then up the east side to the Manhattan Bridge. Again, this is all motherhood for me. And I must mention Dan Doctoroff. One of his big projects was to unify everything that is going on between Brooklyn, the Brooklyn waterfront, Governors Island, and then Staten Island, and making it into a harbor park. Yes, the attention is there, and it strikes me as odd when I come across people who are against it all now.

You have spoken in the past about how, if we can clean up our waterways enough, amenities like the Floating Pool will not be necessary in the future. What are your thoughts on the ability of temporary space to condition the public to see a space as what it could be, and to be a catalyst for action and change?
I think that the pool is really a catalyst for the demand to find some way to clean up parts of these waters. The DEC permit requires the Parks Department and the City, I guess the DEP, to clean up a piece of the Bronx River so that people can actually swim in it. If the pool hadn’t been stationed there, then the DEC wouldn’t have required that.

I don’t know if you realize this, but the pool was located between a waste treatment plant and fertilizer plant. Treated waste from the former gets sent to the latter plant to get turned into fertilizer. The smells there can be pretty obnoxious. This summer, because the pool was there and the park is there, the community finally got together and, I believe with the NRDC, brought a lawsuit against the city and fertilizer plant to abate the smells. The pool was a catalyst for that. It allowed them to say to the City: You have given us this wonderful thing. Now make it usable.

The Floating Pool: Jonathan Kirschenfeld

Urban Omnibus — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:11:46 +0000

Jonathan Kirschenfeld
Design Architect of the Floating Pool

How did the Floating Pool get started?
It started a little before 1999. Early on in my practice, I had more time to take my imagination to places it wouldn’t otherwise go. I started working on another floating project, a floating theater, learning what it was like to try to do a project without a client. I went around to community boards to ask for their support, I applied for grants. And during this process, I met a wonderful woman named Ann Buttenwieser, who was running the Parks Council, was very interested in waterfront issues, and was very supportive of an innovative project like this. But after two or three years I put it on the shelf for a little while. A couple years later, I got a phone call from Ann Buttenwieser. She said, “I loved the theater but I have been dreaming of making a floating swimming pool, would you be interested?” I had never worked on a pool before, but what does that matter? I said “Of course, let’s get started!”

That must have required a distinct approach to your research.
I was pretty familiar with regulatory, city and approving agencies. I learned early on that this was going to be a very difficult project to categorize. Was it a boat or was it a building? Who regulates: the Coast Guard or the building department? Of course, it ends up being both.

At the beginning, we were talking about making the pool something that was self contained, off the grid, fully powered by sun and wind, something that you did not need to plug in to land-based utilities. Given the budget, however, we decided to do a basic version first. There were a lot of issues aside from the very difficult one of how to take a rusting, 260-foot long, steel barge that used to haul cargo up and down the Mississippi and completely restructure it to hold a pool, a mechanical area and a whole series of structures that included a snack bar, changing rooms, bathrooms, a manager’s office, a reception area, and a staff room. We ended up cutting a huge rectangle out of the deck and dropping it down – after cutting through some very large trusses – to what is now the pool bottom. We had to buff out a series of attachments on the deck, but you’ll see, if you look carefully, circles, triangles, and little remnants that ultimately highlight the history of this barge.

In the basic version, the not quite off the grid version, what infrastructure does it tap into when docked?
Each summer the barge was going to be at different waterfront area enabling folks to have an instant amenity. One of the issues with siting the barge had to do with the infrastructural cost involved in mooring it in any one place for just one summer. To spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring a water line, a sewer line, and an electrical line to the pool that is going to be there for two months is, in a sense, contradictory to its desired effect.

The pleasure of the temporary is in the idea of the circus coming to town … it has all the elements of great architecture and great theater.

We’re in the process now of talking to a variety of stakeholders and funders to do a version that is completely off the grid. We’d like to be working with manufacturers who see this as a demonstration project for new technologies in the environmentally progressive world.

What was the construction process?
We completed 60% of the construction in a New Orleans shipyard — mostly the steel work and the yard specific tasks. The rest was kind of standard architectural construction, which we knew would be more effectively and economically done in New York.

Initially it was going to be a spud-moored barge, which is what you typically see, where you have a spud collar and a piling driven into the river bottom and the barge moves up and down with the tide but doesn’t move laterally. But it was very expensive and we couldn’t find the spuds in time, so we decided on a system of six anchors, which turned out to be much less costly and still very effective. For the three months that the pool was at Brooklyn Bridge Park there was very little movement on deck, it seemed stable as a rock.

We started the ten-day process of pulling the barge up from New Orleans without knowing where it was going to go. It was a little risky. We had not received permission from the Department of Environmental Conservation yet, which was a major piece of the approval puzzle. After an intense three month period of time, filled with meetings every week with the State, the City, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the architects, the engineers, and many, many lawyers, it was decided in March of 2007 that the pool would open by July 4th in between Piers 4 and 5, where Brooklyn Bridge Park would be, to introduce this incredible amenity to the community at large. It was a huge gamble, but we had a tremendous group of motivated people and great government officials supporting us.

It was sort of like preparing for a dinner party. You are never quite ready but at a certain point you just sweep unfinished things under the rug and welcome your guests. So we swept a little of the debris underneath the table, where no one could see, and watched the place fill with kids for the first time in the seven year saga of the pool.

How was Barretto Point chosen as the next site?
Ann’s intention, and the mission of the Neptune Foundation, was always to give the pool as a gift to New York City, so it was the Department of Parks and Recreation that needed to site it in a place that they thought was most effective. Hunts Point is the only community board in all five boroughs that does not have public pool, so they really focused on that community. They had just finished a beautiful park, Barretto Point Park, and spent a few months with the NYSDEC working out a long term permitting agreement.

It was moved at five in the morning in a beautiful mysterious fog up into Barretto Point Park and moored off a beautiful grassy knoll. So now, instead of taking a gangway from what was essentially a large parking area, you walk through the park and up the 90 foot-long gangways onto the pool, where you look onto quite an interesting urban waterfront. It’s not quite the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty and Lower Manhattan, but it is equally arresting. The pool has been a tremendous success up there and my understanding is that it will stay there for several years. The last count showed, I think, a typical crowd of 1,200 kids a day.

The exigencies of working in the public sector and having to deal with the costs of doing an innovative temporary structure like this involves having to evolve the idea over time. One of the most fascinating things about the project is that it can move. While the pool, for now, is in the Bronx, either this version or another version will be a peripatetic project, where its arrival is awaited and its departure mourned. That’s what excites me ultimately about the temporary nature – it has more the quality of life than something built with brick and mortar.

Ultimately we like to see the pool as a Trojan Horse, which gets people really excited about the waterfront. Ostensibly, this could push the political process forward, prompting local community groups to advocate for more access to the waterfront, for better water.

When you are trying something new it is very difficult for people to believe in it until it is physically there. With the floating pool, the only way that people were finally convinced that this was a real thing and that it needed to open was because we dragged it up from New Orleans.

A lot of these ideas have the spirit of kids putting a carnival together in the backyard. It’s meant to be so low tech and so imaginable — all you have to do is stack some boxes and put up some curtains and that’s enough to create a space that reminds of one being in La Scala. For me, that’s the pleasure of the temporary and of using materials that are common or readily available. You can create something that seems much richer and more evocative of buildings but with materials that are still meant to be suggestive of a temporality, of something that doesn’t always exist, that isn’t there forever. The pleasure of the temporary is in the idea of the circus coming to town, setting up the tents, providing this amazing new world and then skipping out and leaving; it has all the elements of great architecture and great theater. But until you build it folks have a really hard time believing it can be done.

Seven years later the pool is built and now we are starting to get a tremendous amount of enthusiasm, but it took a very long series of efforts and obstacles and tremendous amount of persistence on the part of the design team, on the part of the client, the Neptune Foundation, to make it real. These urban issues are the reason I am an architect and live in New York City — playing with the incredibly vibrant line between public and private, how you do it, how you make things feel alive, how you create urban spaces that are an active part of the city, where unexpected things happen. That is what gets me up in the morning.