Taking its name from an era-appropriate Sonic Youth album, the New Museum exhibit NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star celebrates the chaotic energy and culture of New York in 1993. In order to promote the exhibit as a conduit to the recent past, agency Droga5 arranged for 5,000 of the city’s pay phones to be equipped with bits of location-specific history from some of the people who lived it.
1993 was 20 years ago??
Officially launched in May 2010, NYC °CoolRoofs alters the flat roofs of New York City from black and gray to white, with a goal to paint 6 million square feet of the city’s roofs. The goal is simple: use white paint to reflect the solar rays and to reduce the amount of heat that black roofs capture.
Shared Spaces: NY’s Flatiron District is doing it right.
Flatiron Public Plazas
The Public Plazas were opened in August 2008, complete with a reconfiguration of traffic patterns at the intersection of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. This project creates safer conditions for pedestrians and cyclists. Additional pedestrian space, new crosswalks and bike lanes and simplified patterns for vehicular traffic knit the neighborhood together and provide a more enjoyable experience for the people who live, work, do business in, and visit the area.
(Source: flatironbid.org)
A series of chairs enmeshed into a table and another series of chairs that extends into a roof? The waterfront by the Hudson River in NY certainly has some innovative public furniture.
+1 for multi-functionality
Subway Ads Can Not Compute Due to Artsy Technical Difficulties
Now fellow NYC commuters understand why I have been giving out an amused snort while waiting for the train.
Discovered during my usual moseying around Washington Square Park, the Strangers Project endeavors to collect stories from any passerby. While it shares a similar nature to PostSecret, participants can write about anything that crosses their mind, “as long as it’s true” according to the man who started it all.
If you’re in NYC right now, then be on the watch for this humble sign. The Strangers Project will be in Washington Square Park among other locations for the next few weeks.
And as for me, how could I pass up an opportunity to write a few words?
(Source: strangersproject.com)
For visual learners, infographics are the best!
Cacti are sprouting in Manhattan?
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Presented by the Animus Arts Collective, they create these urban “cacti” by linking brightly colored cable ties thousands of times around a lamppost. According to the makers of this project, “We as artists wanted to create something of beauty out of everyday items. We wanted to show that making art doesn’t require a lot of resources, formal education, or even money. Art and creativity are things we’re all capable of.”
So for my internship this summer, I will be writing 2 articles per week for Untapped Cities. So far I have written about:
New York City Water Tanks: A Small but Prolific Icon
Turning Empty Brooklyn Storefronts into Street Art Venues
From Transportation to Shopping Stations: The Shipping Container Market
And here’s a delicious photo from the third article:
Tiny Origami Apartment in Manhattan Unfolds into 4 Rooms
As the originating blog says, “There is genius and then there is GENIUS.” I couldn’t agree more.
On an afternoon’s stroll through Spanish Harlem, the folks behind the New York Shitty blog came across two guys making good use of a spare police barrier. The genius truly comes through from the side angle:
As the blog reports:
The elegance of this arrangement is truly stunning: cantilevered seating courtesy of NYPD barricades. Initially these chaps couldn’t understand why I, some dotty 30-something Greenpointer, was so fascinated by their creation. Once I explained respectfully (and made it clear they would not be in the New York Daily News) they had plenty to say.
The gent on the right claimed credit for this creation— and stated that the NYPD gives him plenty of guff about it. He told yours truly they come by regularly and roust him from his “bench”. Because it is their property. He then pointed to a NYPD squad car across the street and exclaimed: There they are. Can’t you see them hating me?!?
If the Urban Guide for Alternate Use ran a top ten list, you’re looking at one of the top three entries right here.
Say Something Nice
Another video via Improv Everywhere and this one is especially heartwarming :)
For our latest mission we constructed a custom wooden lectern with a megaphone holster and an attached sign that read, ‘Say Something Nice.’ The lectern was placed in public spaces around New York and then left alone. We wanted to see what would happen if New Yorkers were given the opportunity to amplify their voices to ‘say something nice.’
(Source: improveverywhere.com)
A tourist lane set up by the New York Dept. of Transportation?
Nah, it’s just another prank by Improv Everywhere, but maybe they do have a point…
It’s true that Manhattan lacks the elegant squares, axial boulevards and civic monuments around which other cities designed their public spaces. But it has evolved a public realm of streets and sidewalks that creates urban theater on the grandest level. No two blocks are ever precisely the same because the grid indulges variety, building to building, street to street.
HYPAR PAVILION AT LINCOLN CENTER, NYC
The dual requirements of a destination restaurant and a public green within the limited open area of Lincoln Center’s North Plaza are satisfied in a single gesture sited between the reflecting pool and the plaza’s north edge. A twisted plane of lawn is elevated to act as an occupiable green rood over a glass pavilion restaurant…The resulting topography is oriented away from the city noise and traffic to create a bucolic urbanism.
(Source: dsrny.com)
