[munificent]

Is it just me, or is this a completely stupid idea?

So you take a big pool and stick it in the middle of a dirty river. You need it to be full of water, so you filter a bunch of river water and fill it up. Then, for no good reason I can discern, you take that nicely filtered water and dump it right back into the river so that you can make room for more water that you then have to filter.

What is the value add of continuous filtration here?

Why not just filter one pool's worth of water, using whatever process you want, fill it up, and be done with it? What's so magical about "fresh" East River water, aside from the presence of all of the nasty shit you have to work super hard to remove?

[thinkalone]

Their intention is for the pool to act as a filter to clean NYC's waterways[1]. Research into effective water filters could be worthwhile, but the floating pool seems to overshadow that aspect.

[1]: http://www.pluspool.org/about/