FloatLab

FloatLab is coming to Bartram's Garden in Southwest Philadelphia, with the installation opening to the public in Spring 2027. It's a 75-foot-wide inhabitable floating steel ring, designed by artist J. Meejin Yoon and Höweler + Yoon Architecture in partnership with the garden and Mural Arts Philadelphia. It's the country's first tide-responsive experience, and it's meant to be walked on, not just looked at.

The ring is painted a bright chartreuse, a color drawn from the autumn leaves of Bartram's Garden—the oldest surviving botanical garden in North America. It's also a nod to Andy Goldsworthy's 1980 installation Yellow patch (elm). A system of ballast chambers and mooring piles lets the structure rise and fall with the river's five-to-seven-foot tides, so you stay dry and at eye level with the water regardless of where the tide sits. It's the second safe access point to the Tidal Schuylkill, and the project treats the river as a laboratory—the "lab" in its name comes from the chance to take in the residential and industrial landscape of Southwest Philadelphia and to examine the river's chemistry. The site also draws on the water's deep history as the homeland of the Lenape people.

This isn't a brand-new idea: the project was first prototyped in 2016. When it finally opens, you'll find it at Bartram's Garden, 5400 Lindbergh Boulevard, and admission is free. It's a long way off, but it's worth keeping on your radar for when the weather turns.