Dong-Ping Wong Discusses +POOL DESIGN

We go one-on-one with Dong-Ping Wong, designer of the floating pool planned for NYC’s East River and find out what Plus Pool is all about.

BY JOE TRUSTY

Photos: Provided by Plus Pool

We report on our fair share of unique pool concepts at Pool Magazine. None so far this year, with the exception of possibly the Sky Pool in London, has managed to capture people’s imagination the way this project has. Plus Pool is a unique floating pool concept design that is shaped like a plus sign (+). The project has been discussed for a long time. For the past few months photos of the pool concept have begun circulating on social media once again. After years and years of pushback from the city, the Plus Pool project finally got the green light. The 285,000 gallon floating pool will have a permanent address in the East River.

The minimalist pool design is the brainchild of four designers. Dong-Ping Wong and Oana Stanescu of the architecture firm Family and Archie Lee Coates IV and Jeff Franklin of the design firm PlayLab. The group originally conceived of the idea for Plus Pool back in 2010.

Wong, a New York state licensed architect with a Masters Degree in Architecture from Columbia University, first conceived of the project with his friends one hot summer night roughly ten years ago..

“Basically the whole idea is to find a way to swim in natural water around New York City,” said Wong, “In this case East River water, which as you would imagine is not what you would think of as the cleanest water. So how could we swim in that safely?” asked Wong, a question we wanted to know the answer to as well.

The question itself has many skeptics wondering how designers plan to pull it off. Wong explained the basic premise behind what he plans to do. “In concept, the filtration system is a big strainer. Filtration is built into the walls of the pools. Water literally flows through the walls of the pool itself into the basin.” said Wong.

The Plus Pool’s filtration system will act as a giant strainer filtering over a million gallons of East River water each day. “In normal operation we expect to filter over a million gallons of water a day, but in comparison to the entire volume of the East River it’s really a drop in the bucket.” explained Wong.

“The filtration is a combination of technologies we’ve already found in place for other uses,” said Wong, “Industrial water waste treatment, municipal uses. We’re not really cleaning it to drinking water standards. We don’t really need to. It’s a combination of textiles, ultra-filtration membranes, some very rudimentary filtration as well.” explained Wong.

“The basic idea of a Brita filter is that it filters water in stages from the largest materials down to the smallest and what you’re left with is a pretty clean piece of water you can swim in.” said Wong.

“Our biggest concern is bacteria.” explained Wong “There’s I forget how many numbers of different parameters we’re looking at. There’s bacteria counts, pH, oxygen levels, color… but bacteria is the main one. Obviously the reason being that the coliform count is what the Department of Health and the state looked at as the main measure of cleanliness of any body of water that you’re swimming in.” explained Wong.

“In New York state there’s something known as a ‘Bathing Beach’ which is a man made pool. There’s a coliform count that we try to get under. I believe it’s 35 cfu’s per hundred million for bathing beaches.” said Wong, as he explained the requirements his filtration system needs to meet in order to adhere to state health guidelines.

“We’re moving water through a series of geotextiles.” said Wong, “It’s really just smaller and smaller pore sizes that you’re passively passing water through and essentially all that’s doing is capturing particles.”

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