Concrete Jungle is an intervention on construction sites in downtown New York. The rebuilding of Lower Manhattan since 2001 has been one of the largest construction undertakings in the history of American cities. Its future promise has meant a noisy and disruptive present — traffic detours, sidewalk closures, orange cones, Jersey barriers, loud drilling and trash dumpsters challenge workers, residents and visitors daily. An initiative by the Downtown Alliance and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council is to reinvent and transform community eyesores into places of attraction, curiosity and anticipation.
This whimsical project puns on the common metaphor “concrete jungle” by morphing the banal orange safety stripes on jersey barriers into brilliantly colored stenciled “zebra” strips adding an element of the natural wild to our urban maze. Designed to accommodate the weather and the mercurial nature of construction sites, the sections of jersey barriers can be reconfigured or moved to future sites as the standard fluorescent traffic paint utilized in the project retains the original traffic safety features.
www.reconstructionnyc.org
