Waterworld NYC
Feb 12th, 2009 by Jervey
I’ve been waiting to have some time to write something about this Waterpod project that has the potential to be suberbly awesome. But then Lisa Selin Davis went ahead and did the dirty work for me in her (also superbly awesome) Radiant City column in Grist.
Enter the Waterpod, a “floating, sculptural eco-habitat designed for the rising tides” that will set sail from New York City in May. The pod is to be a “triple-domed island,” 80 by 25 feet, made from recycled and found materials: wood, fabric, plastic, metal, and whatever its creators can salvage from elsewhere in the sea, all plopped atop and next to an industrial barge. Apparently, out on the maritime edges of Brooklyn and Queens in the Rockaways, about 300 boats are in various states of neglect and sunkenness, wasting perfectly good usable materials and leaching all manner of nasty chemicals into the water. The Waterpod does double duty, ameliorating that situation and launching, literally, a new model of housing.
The floating city of artists — yes, there will be performances, art installations, lectures, and workshops in the first dome, which up to 140 members of the public can attend by hopping on and off at various docking locations — will be powered by a solar and wind hybrid system. The power system will also light up the main dome with rotating images and lights, a la the Empire State Building. It will be both nomadic — departing from one of our most notoriously polluted waterways, Brooklyn’s Newtown Creek, and docking around the city — and self-sustaining. The second dome includes hydroponic systems for growing food on board (on which the five full-time residents plan to subsist almost entirely for a few months, with the help of an on-board chicken coop and some supplemental fishing), graywater recycling, and rainwater catchment. The third dome will house the sleeping and studying quarters. Think of it as Bucky Fuller meets an arts-focused intentional community aboard a cruise ship.
Do the piece some justice and read it in its entirety.