Public Water Works, or, Staying Cool at the Pool

Abstract

This project seeks to reimagine the municipal pool; reinforcing it as a vital urban space, and reprioritizing it in the climate crisis. As New England anticipates extreme heat, Boston must respond with creative infrastructures of cool outdoor spaces for its residents. Public Water Works projects a city / community approach to the public pool as a landscape.

The pilot project, OUR POOL, is proposed in the Grove Hall neighborhood. With water levels reinterpreting tidal flows, OUR POOL encourages an active relationship between bodies of people and bodies of water. These basins work within a system of water that mists, falls, flows, drains, and pools. Through smaller modular pools, dynamic water movement, filtering vegetation, and seasonal rotation, Public Water Works demands participation in infrastructures of joy and of cooling to create new typologies of public space in our ever-warming city.