Polish Design Season: Jakub Szczęsny of Centrala has designed a floating island that purifies river water, powered by exercise machines.

The river water is passed through four filters by kinetic pumps attached to the exercise equipment.

It is then collected in four tanks before being returned to the river through a fountain in the raft's centre.

Szczęsny created the installation for architecture and art festival Synchronocity in Warsaw this month.

Here's some more information from Szczęsny:

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In frame of the second issue of architecture/art festival SYNCHRONICITY, Warsaw City Council commissioned a an installation that would interfere with the new city program of the revitalization of Vistula riverside. A floating island came out as a natural idea, as islands/platforms symbolize autonomy from reality serving as ideal figures or conceptualization spaces.

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I’ve proposed a systematic approach: a water treatment plant powered by human muscles by Warsaw inhabitants performing fitness exercises and pumping polluted river water via kinetic pumps integrated in the fitness machines to four filters and four tanks to a fountain basin at the very end of the cycle. The whole installation is supposed to perform a role of a propaganda tool changing the consciousness of Warsawers by showing the efficiency of human action in the process of purifying the waters of their river. What’s meaningful is the fact that many Poles, even after twenty years of liberalization, still don’t believe in their own potential as individuals or members of communities, in positively changing their life environment.

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Author: Jakub Szczęsny
Cooperation: Kaja Pawełek, Artur Kolanowski, Witek Komarczewski, Marek Tkaczyk
Production: Bęc Zmiana Fundation