New York architect Dong-Ping Wong, who came up with the idea for a floating, cross-shaped swimming pool proposed for New York City, claims that he has been "frozen out" of the project.
Wong made the claim in a post on Instagram, which addressed the recent news that the + Pool project has been granted $16 million to advance.
In the post, Wong also expressed concern that his original civic vision for the project had been lost, claiming that "the ideals that grounded the project slowly gave way to interests that prioritized money, exposing the project to the levers of gentrification".
Wong, now director of New York-based practice Food Architects, led the design of + Pool under defunct studio Family along with PlayLab Inc co-founders Archie Lee Coates IV and Jeff Franklin and architect Oana St?nescu when it "was launched as a lark" in 2010. The floating pool, which will reportedly filter up to 1,000,000 gallons of river water a day without the use of chemicals, was designed to float in the waterways of New York City to provide publicly accessible swimming.
"The goal wasn't to just build a pool"
"When I started + Pool, the goal wasn't to just build a pool," said Wong in his post. "The goal was to see if it was possible to make big civic changes to the city from the ground up for places that often get overlooked."
Since the project's launch, it has faced a series of starts and stops, as both its now-patented technology ...