Urban swimming, urban pools - Urban River Swimming is an international initiative to return residents of megacities the right to use reservoirs for swimming. Rivers and their banks are a public resource, and it will be perfectly natural to turn the water area into a public space - convenient, accessible and safe.
Oslo
Ранее we wrote about the infrastructure of floating saunas in Oslo, which are one of the factors of happiness for residents of Norway. There, before the townspeople started diving into the Oslofjord without fear, the city authorities organized a "global cleaning": almost a million cubic meters of toxic silt were lifted from the bottom of the fjord and taken away. And as part of the installation of the Midgardsormen wastewater treatment system, the city's water supply and sewage system was completely renovated in 6 years (2009-2015). The budget of the Midgardsormen project was 133 million euros.
Floating sauna in Oslofjord
Berlin
In Berlin, back in the 90s, the architect brothers Jan and Tim Edler started the Flussbad (River Basin) campaign to turn a two-kilometer section of the Spree into a city pool. The designers won a grant from the municipality in the amount of 4 million euros in order to install modern filtration systems and equip the simplest functional descents to the water. Every spring and summer, the water area near the paved base of the Pergamon Museum and the recently opened thin white colonnade by David Chipperfield is filled with swimmers in colorful swimming caps. By 2025, the city pool improvement project will be completed.
Group swimming on the river Spree in Berlin
The Badeschiff Berlin project is a floating public pool on the river Spree with a wooden relaxation terrace, a beach and an outdoor bar
And for lovers of tropical beaches, a pool was built on the Spree River from a sunken barge and wooden platforms. Badeschiff Berlin, with a terrace for relaxation, a beach and an open-air bar, was so loved by the residents of the city that they did not want to give up the pleasure even in winter. Designers from the studio Wilk-Salinas Architekten designed a membrane shell for all three platforms, which made it possible to create a comfortable microclimate for relaxation under the dome.
Badeschiff Berlin
Winter cover for Badeschiff Berlin by Wilk-Salinas Architekten
Paris
In Paris, a free and open swimming area appeared in the La Villette canal back in 2017. This example proves that the organization of a safe beach is possible even in historically polluted areas. The pool has three swimming areas, one of which is intended for children. In fact, the pool consists of three different pools, including one for children. In the first summer, the swimming pool broke the attendance record. After the end of the quarantine, they promise to return the pool. And by the time of the 2024 Olympic Games, the City Hall of Paris promised to clean the Seine and make the river suitable for swimming, which had been prohibited since 1923.
Public pool in Canal La Villette, Paris
London
In London, the idea of creating a city pool is popularized by the Studio Octopi architectural bureau. The Thames Baths project - to create a floating platform on the Thames, was developed back in 2014. "Baths of Thames" will filter river water to the level of FLL standards (German standard for swimming water in natural pools).
The Thames Baths project is from the London bureau Studio Octopi
The Thames Baths project is from the London bureau Studio Octopi
In the cold season, heating is planned - in order for these outdoor pools to be suitable for use all 12 months of the year. Since 2019, the architects have been collaborating with the management of East London Baths, a company responsible for communal city baths in East London. But coordination in the municipality is progressing with great difficulty. The authorities of London are afraid that such a practice will force them to take responsibility for the global cleaning of the Thames, and offer impatient swimmers to use wetsuits. But the founders of Studio Octopi, James Lowe and Chris Romer-Lee, are confident that they will achieve success with the help of enthusiasts, many have united around the project.
Switzerland
Well, in the big cities of Switzerland - such as Basel, Bern, Zurich and Geneva, swimming in city rivers has long become a pleasant and safe form of leisure. Yes, in the foothills of the Alps, rivers are cleaned annually with meltwater, but until the 90s, industrial enterprises just as regularly dumped chemical waste into the rivers.
Public swimming pool on the Rhine River in the city of Schaffhausen, Switzerland
Contemporary residents of Basel no longer remember the industrial disaster of 1986, when a huge amount of phosphates got into the river. This accident became a catalyst for the processes of water purification and revitalization of the coastal zone and its transformation into a safe recreational space.
Swimming in the Rhine in the center of Basel. Photo source: basel.com
Residents of Zurich swim and dive in the city's Limmat river without fear. Photo: © SAM Swiss Architecture Museum, SwimCity © Lucia de Mosteyrin
Бостон
Officially, the cleanest city river in the USA is the Charles River in Boston. Since the middle of the 1995th century, bathing in it was prohibited, and only in 2013 it was possible to relatively clean the Charles from the sewage. Since XNUMX, the local organization Charles River Conservancy has been holding days of mass swimming, in which one and a half thousand people participate. Sanitary services are carefully preparing for these days, and for several days they take water samples to guarantee the safety of swimmers. But ideally, it is planned to create a permanently operating beach area in the center of Boston.
The Charles River Conservancy's proposal to create a public pool on the river in Boston
New York
Well, the authorities of New York finally gave the green light to the + Pool project, which was presented by the Los Angeles PlayLab studio 10 years ago. They designed a cross-shaped swimming pool with salt water, which simultaneously serves as a filter that cleans the water with the help of membranes and without the use of chemicals. According to the developers, the platform will be able to filter more than two million liters of river water per day. The filters will be operated under the control of software developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for testing global membrane filtration systems.
The public pool in the East River navigable strait opposite Manhattan is a project of the PlayLab studio
The public pool in the East River navigable strait opposite Manhattan is a project of the PlayLab studio
All these projects are united by the fact that they were initially initiated from below - by activists, informal urbanists, designers or participants in the ecological movement. It is possible to expect social initiatives aimed at recreation from city authorities for decades. Floating filtering platforms-swimming pools can become a compromise for Ukrainian cities as well - on the one hand, municipalities get a reprieve for carrying out expensive large-scale works to clean the channel, residents get the opportunity to swim safely, and the water is partially filtered.
In your opinion, which of the scenarios is best suited for Kyiv and other large cities of Ukraine?
