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Arts & Entertainment

New "Urban Umbrella" Scaffolding Hits The Town Next Month


By

Garth Johnston

Published Nov 30, 2011

Modified Nov 30, 2011


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By

Garth Johnston

Published Nov 30, 2011

Modified Nov 30, 2011


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For a city that never sleeps we sure do take our time with construction. Forget about the Freedom Tower for a minute, even our new scaffolding takes ages to come to fruition. Back in January 2010 the city proudly introduced us to a brand new (and quite attractive) new style of building shed called the 'urban umbrella' and now, nearly two years later, the first one is set to hit New York City streets in December.

The attractive new scaffolding—which nobody is legally required to use but is reportedly not much more expensive than the usual ugly ones—will be making its debut in December outside of 100 Broadway, a 24-story office building in Lower Manhattan. The new look was created by University of Pennsylvania student Young-Hwan Choi who was awarded $10,000 for coming up with it along with engineer Sarrah Khan and architect Andres Cortés, both of the Agencie Group.

"I would say it is a really elegant take on protecting you instead of from rain from debris falling from a construction site," Robert LiMandri, the city’s buildings commissioner said of the new look for "a necessarily evil for construction."

Obligatory urban sombrero joke goes here.

Tagged

architecture

department of buildings

design

DOB

scaffolding

Sidewalk shed

urban umbrella


Garth Johnston

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