wejetset - magazine - Places to See: Fulton Street NYC

Places to See: Fulton Street NYC

Discovering art among the hustle & bustle of a city is one of the best ways to experience a new destination. If you visit NYC over the next few months you have to stop by Fulton Street. You won’t be disappointed.

Construction never looked this good. Fulton Fence is a temporary installation on the corner of Fulton Street and Broadway in New York City. It is on view until spring of 2008. The project is a response to the effects of development; in particular the visual pollution created by the presence of construction sites in small concentrated areas. The beautifying methods used on Fulton Street are something that could easily be replicated in other cities.

Fulton Fence is one of three interventions composed by the pilot, Re:Construction public art program organized by the Downtown Alliance and the LMCC.

From their site:

Accents of orange and yellow plastic construction meshes, industrial caution lights, safety signage and the chain-link fencing that universally signify construction-in-progress will be collaged into a vibrant op-art mural bounding the water main retrofitting on Fulton Street. These treatments will be affixed in segments following the 10-foot long section frames of chain-link fencing that currently encircle the construction site. At the time of installation the team will establish a primary linear pattern along the line of the fence that combines 30 or more of these modules. As these modules get moved around by the contractors due to on-going construction needs, these new arrangements will create unpredictable patterns conveying the very history of the construction as it progresses.

As part of the piece, the team will continually be building a web-based project, which will become the location of an online intervention that seeks to parallel the construction of the physical site with the construction of a space within the Internet. This digital destination takes the form of a continually scrolling web page as both an organizational tool and analog of strolling down the perimeter of the project on Fulton Street. Just as the physical installation weaves elements of vernacular construction materials into the frame of the fence, the website will embed media driven interventions, process documentation, location information, online widget mash-ups, and mobile downloads among others.

These two explorations, one architectural, the other online, seek to re-define under-construction sites as expressive spaces in a city of ongoing transformation.