construction

Making Over Construction Sites - Just Window Dressing?

David Dunlap reports in today's New York Times about "Re:Construction" -- a project that aims to beautify very ugly construction sites in the city. Sponsored by the the Alliance for Downtown New York and The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council to the tune of $100k, the project takes the designs of architects, designers and artists and "re-imagines" pedestrian obstacles around building sites.

The designs range in ambition from simply painting concrete "Jersey barriers" with orange zebra stripes to a sidewalk construction shed with angled struts and a rising ceiling covering the sidewalk. And there is already talk of extending the program to other areas of the city.

This blog hasn't actually witnessed these designs in person yet, and so reserves its judgment about how attractive they are, but the issue that many visitors to this site have raised, and have identified with, is not the ugliness of construction sites, but the proliferation of them. We wonder whether making construction sites more attractive is an attempt to draw the public's eye away from the number of buildings going up and make construction seem less obnoxious.

What do you think? Have you seen these designs? And, if so, do you feel better about construction sites now? Are there other parts of the city that you think should be "re-imagined" to make them more pleasing on the eye? read more...