Presented here is a (losing) competition entry for a re-design of the ubiquitous “urban shed” – the pole and plywood constructions temporarily thrown up to protect pedestrians from falling building debris during facade renovations. They are an interesting typology, both because they are everywhere and are also built using pre-fabricated components in a completely market driven approach, every element has been pared down to cost per protective surface. Every couple of years someone tries and re-thinks these things, but due to the cost and existing, entrenched interests, these re-designs never go anywhere. The argument I was trying to push was twofold: 1) taking advantage of an existing material that already relates to street protection could offset costs, and 2) that the design would be exciting enough that building owners could reap some economical benefit through a boost in traffic flow by putting up something like this. Project text below:

A city manifests itself through its architecture, its built form represents its values and priorities. This ideas competition hosted by the New York Building Foundation is an amazing opportunity to explore how the city and building owners will proceed to treat what is in many ways the most modest and ubiquitous of architectural elements, but one that we all encounter each and every day – the construction shed.

The questions before us are simple, will the form of the shed continue to be dictated by that which presents the perceived lowest cost per sf? This is a notion dictated more by complacency and inertia as opposed to New York ingenuity and data-driven metrics. Or, will the shed evolve into a form as slick and scaleless as the latest glass and steel construction, furthering the ever expanding gulf between New Yorkers and relegating architecture and engineering to the realm of a luxury item. Or, will it pursue a sustainable, iconic, human-scaled solution, which can adapt to changing needs in neighborhoods as diverse as ours?

The proposal included here envisions a future construction shed built from reclaimed NYPD wooden sawhorses. These sawhorses were retired in 2007, but they are still available for donation and hold a prominent place in the collective consciousness of the city. Their familiarity with New Yorkers imbues them with an ingrained acceptance to their position as part of the urban streetscape – like seeing an old friend again, but their novel use here, elevates the basic construction assembly into an uplifting form that makes the shed into something more than pure tectonics.

They also present us with an opportunity to acquire a readily available, highly-durable material for a low-cost. In a practical sense, the sawhorses in their previous life as crowd control devices had to withstand a number of structural requirements. Here, the existing sawhorse connection techniques – slotting, nailing and screwing – are used again, this time to withstand a vertical load through multiple connecting load paths and redundant connections that will meet and exceed Section 3307 of the New York City Building Code. Wood also allows for ease of assembly through cutting of pieces and through the use of inexpensive attachments and fasteners as required.

Lastly, this design represents the transformations inherent in the evolving city over the last 50 years. The NYPD wooden sawhorse material here is no longer one that restricts movement and creates artificial barriers in urban space, but rather it is put to a new purpose, one that enables free and open movement while providing shelter and protection for all.

Stencils with movable joints

Barrier made of (10) 20′ long modules

Stencils laser cut out of oil board with rotating brass pin joints

200′ of barrier painted in 4 hours

NYCares volunteers painted barrier number 10

Final painted barrier images

My design for “Singing in the Rain” was commissioned by the NYC DOT as part of the Urban Art program to Beautify Barriers throughout the city. The site is located just South of the theater district and Times Square at 36th St and 9th Ave in Manhattan, and references musicals – especially one in particular – as well as motion, animation and street rhythm. The piece will be up for 1 year and made use of a series of movable stencils of figures with articulated joints to allow for variation in the 200′ barrier length. 20 awesome volunteers of all ages participating in the NYC Cares program (many who had never picked up a paintbrush before) were able to arrange the stencils and finish painting the design in 4 hours based off of a series of detailed instruction sheets.

Continuing my love of camouflage and painting jersey barriers in a way that is probably too heavy on the new aesthetic vibe, but sill enjoyable nonetheless.

Related: Satellite map images with missing or unclear data

Inspired by both razzle dazzle camouflage and my middle school trapper keeper, this barrier entry presents a strong graphic face to the street. While the concept of camouflage may certainly seem like a contradictory tact for a protective barrier whose sole purpose is to remain unhidden, by using bold, angular geometric forms to blur the barrier’s edges, this in fact increases its perceived range. The illusory effect of the forms induce nearby traffic to slow down, producing a safer, more bike and pedestrian friendly thruway.

With a budget under $300, the installation is realized as a spatial prototype for how a fleeting work can provoke an increased engagement between users and public space. Built with over 200 led lights and conceived to take maximum advantage of a temporarily repurposed historic building, the work becomes as ephemeral as a passing comet, creating a new constellation in the night sky, visible from the streets of Brooklyn for one night only.

I finished as a finalist, congrats to Oscar Lopez for a great winning entry.

For a jersey barrier competition submission, we started with an iconic New York quote from Agatha Christie as indicative of the city: “It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story,” and played off the recurring themes of mystery and dual meanings inherent to the make-up of our city. New Yorkers strive to challenge themselves, whether by running through the park during the marathon or following their career dreams, and we wanted to elevate something that is typically a solitary challenging act pursued underground in the subway – solving sudoku puzzles – to the street level, making it a communal, shared act. The design then works simply on two levels, as both a reflection of the city, and at the smaller scale, of the acts that makes New Yorkers such apt problem solvers.

The design will be quick to apply. Using only a limited color palette and a repeating stencil system, we will be able to economically create a bold, colorful graphic statement that will encourage all those that walk, bike, and run by the barrier to think about and interact with their great city.

A quick competition entry Jackie and I put together for a mural to be painted on a jersey barrier somewhere in the city. The murals are painted by a dedicated group of volunteers over one beautiful NYC fall day, so instead of specifying a fixed design, we proposed a set of instructions that the volunteers could perform relating to the types of gestures that are associated with travel and roads, turning the act of painting the mural into a type of game. We designed new types of brushes that are attached to runner’s legs, bicycle wheels and extended from automobiles to create an abstract layering of movement vectors.

concept
The gesture of the “i want you” poster was extruded and placed in a cylindrical shape for maximum exposure. Each arm becomes a customizable exhortation to vote and the end cap can be written and erased with a dry erase marker. The gesture is returned by the prospective voter who has to reach into the arms and place the completed form inside the unit.

assembly

Jackie wrote a great project description for our competition entry for a fence around the world trade center construction site: What makes New York’s skyline so powerful is not the skyscrapers themselves, but the void between and around them, the vibrant hues of sky that hug their every angle. Skyscape focuses on that negative space in a site-specific work that combines photographs of the space above the construction site taken from surrounding boroughs over the course of a single day. The idea is that, not only will our skyline change dramatically with the addition of the Freedom Tower, but the shape of the sky itself, the space it encompasses, and therefore, the relationship between the buildings, the sky, and us will change. We still recognize the buildings’ forms, but they become the void—the sky is now the subject.