While most of the supertall building boom spotlight has been placed China and the UAE over the past few months, there’s an even more staggering development happening much, much closer to home. At least four 1,000-foot-plus skyscrapers are set to rise along (or adjacent to) West 57th Street over the next few years, each of the tall enough to change the city’s skyline forever.
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Most people mean well when they give you directions. However, they often give pretty confusing directions that might get you lost when you try to follow them.
Turning these hand-scrawled directions into an art project, though, is New York conceptual artist Nobutaka Aozaki.
His piece is called Here to There and his goal is to make a map of Manhattan using handwritten directions and maps that he asked for from strangers.
Aozaki walks around the streets dressed in a souvenir baseball cap while toting a Century 21 shopping bag around, posing as a tourist. He then approaches random people to ask about directions on the part of the map he’s working on.
Aozaki’s goal isn’t to create an accurate map (those already exist and his method doesn’t really lead to this end), but rather, he wants to keep track of his daily routine and create a mapped diary of sorts for that.
So if you happen to live around that area, take a closer look at the people around you. Who knows? You might actually run into Aozaki himself.
[via Spoon & Tamago via Colossal]
Have you given a dude in a blue hat directions around Manhattan recently? Did he have a Century 21 shopping bag? If so, there’s a good chance you’ve unwittingly participated in the art (gasp!) of Nobutaka Aozaki, who is building a map of Manhattan based on directions drawn by strangers.
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When you build a monolithic tower that reaches hundreds of feet up into the sky, it’s going to cast a shadow. That can be a big problem for those on the ground, if they’d like to occasionally see the sun. But the designers of a new building being planned in lower Manhattan have figured out a way around the problem: An oddly-shaped building that will not only shed light on occupants, but spread it around for neighbors as well.
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After Hurricane Sandy blew through New York in October, the lion’s share of media coverage focused on the beachfront, where damage was most visible. In lower Manhattan, though, the nine-foot storm surge took a subterranean toll, ruining millions of dollars worth of mechanical systems and forcing many developers to consider how they’d retrofit for the next big one. More »
We’re running out of space, and we’re running out of money—and for anyone who wants to live in a city (that’s billions of humans), that’s a problem. Here’s a solution: micro apartments that squeeze full life into a tiny box. More »
This isn’t a computer simulation of New York. In fact, it’s a 3D panorama that was stitched together from multiple shots taken during a helicopter ride—and the result is beautiful. More »
While Google’s offered free WiFi access in NYC subways from time to time, it’s apparently now set to help get a permanent solution live in a Manhattan neighborhood. There are no details regarding a time-frame, but the company’s linked up with the Chelsea Improvement Company to provide the access in Southwest Chelsea. Aside from the perks of pro bono interwebs for all, the initiative will serve to provide internet to likes of low-income and student housing in the locale — though, it seems a natural undertaking given Google’s office in the area. At the very least, it’s another nice chip toward municipal WiFi in the Big Apple. Full presser after the break.
Continue reading Google to help set up free WiFi blanket in NYC’s Southwest Chelsea neighborhood
Via: Yahoo! News, BGR
This time it was no hype. Sandy rampaged through New York, New Jersey and the rest of the Northeast. The damage has been enormous: more than a hundred dead, massive flooding everywhere, collapsed buildings, generator malfunctions in hospitals, multiple fires, city-wide blackouts and explosions in power plants. More »
Unfairly-great UK illustrator Patrick Vale recreates the whole of lower Manhattan, as seen from the Empire State Building, in this incredible time lapse video. What’s more, he does it completely freehand. Now let’s see him do it from memory. [Patrick Vale via Colossal] More »
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