Synchronicity 2: Public Water Purification Island
The island is a floating platform with nine outdoor fitness machines pumping polluted Vistula water through four filters to a basin placed in the center of the island giving drinkable water. The platform will be floating on Vistula river in the center of Warsaw.
Describe the critical need your solution addresses.
To visualize the positive effect of common effort of citizens in changing their „unchangeable” toxified environment from communist industrialization era by showing the process and the outcome under form of drinkable water.
Explain your initiative in more depth and its stage of development.
The island will be placed along Warsaw downtown waterfront in a popular location.
The inhabitants of Warsaw started to need the river back in their pursuit of healthier lifestyle, but Vistula, the last large European unregulated river remained polluted by industry and agriculture for last 30 years. The island is a modular steel structure on recycled steel barrels with nine outdoor fitness machines standing on an oak deck of 79m2. The machines produce pressure in pipes connecting the river with filters placed 3m above the deck. The filters are: sand, carbon and inverted osmosis, along with UV lamp. The purified water falls onto an inox basin with a oak-finished bench, on which people can sit washing their feet and drinking water falling from filters located above. The concept is an effect of personal initiative of Jakub Szczesny, organizational support from Fundacja Bec Zmiana and financial help from Warsaw Municipality Bureau of Culture. It includes architectural, structural, water treatment and infographic resarches. It was completed beginning of September 2009, published in a book, in Warsaw newspapers and in international blogs gaining wide public acclaim and intrest in further implementations in Gdansk and St. Lawrence River Community.
How does your strategy and approach respond creatively and comprehensively to key issues?
The main issue is to change Pole's and Warsawer's conciousness when it comes to the need of common action and the possibility receiving a positive outcome of their struggle. In this sense the installation is a propaganda tool serving as a way of visualizing the positive change done with people's hands and feet. The island will be open for daily use during warmer season ( from mid-March to mid-October) attracting waterfront sportsmen with the possibility of using fitness machines ( there are none along a tree kilometer line of center's waterfront) and providing an added value of producing the „magical effect” of cleaning a legendary polluted water of Vistula.
