Port Authority

Great source of inspiration found right here in NYC. From Curbed:

“For those who long for the good ole days, when the underside of the three bridges of the Port Authority Bus Terminal was a skeezy section of Ninth Avenue, don't read this: they actually renovated it! The project started in 1995 with a little help from the Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Association; architects PKSB and Leni Schwendinger Light Projects were the team selected for the upgrade shortly after. Now, a mere 14 years later, it's finally complete. As of late last fall, both sides of the avenue are now clad in stainless steel shinyness, and the underside of the bridges are painted in a multicolored pattern. Because the project was designed in the 1990's, the lighting system is fluorescent (not awesome LED's) and the power consumption causes a lot of the underside to be turned off during the week. But at night, up and down Ninth Avenue, it's a glowing lime-streaked beacon."
Architect = PKSB
Lighting Design = Leni

March 2009 Pictures

Took a few snaps of the project in the rain. Aghhh, a blank canvas.

drawing to tile tranfer

Interesting technique used 20 years ago with a similar project. The tile transfer may be a great way to have a high quality design without the complexity of mosaic (to battle the weather elements)

"Carrying 35-millimeter cameras, Mr. Monpremier and the others were dispatched throughout the two-square-mile neighborhood to capture images of landmarks and typical urban scenes. The negatives of the best scenes were then made into slides, and the images projected onto a wall, where they were traced onto paper.

These drawings were transferred in reverse onto 23-by-30-inch linoleum sheets that were then stamped onto large sheets of clay. The large clay images were cut into pieces small enough to fit into kilns and fired, then painted with colored glaze, put back together like puzzle pieces, then finally mounted onto large frames.

86 st 20 years later

NY TIMES metro section "These are no masterpieces. Most of the young people who created them were troubled or struggling students trying to earn their high school equivalency degree. Were the murals to be removed and sold, they probably would not fetch anywhere near as much as the 200 subway art projects by professional artists commissioned since 1985 by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Arts for Transit program."