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\n New York City is currently undergoing a sidewalk shed revolution. One of the more ubiquitous and unsightly fixtures of street life in Manhattan, construction scaffolding is a necessary blight that city leaders are intent on beautifying<\/a>\u2014or, at the very least, shortening its duration. Just over a year ago, the New York City Council passed sweeping, five-part legislation<\/a> aiming to combat this \u201cpervasive problem\u201d through improved sidewalk shed design and more restrictive permit lengths. (As of last March, the average age of the more than 8,000 sidewalk sheds distributed throughout the city was over 500 days, with 334 of them being more than five years old). Additionally, in November of last year, the office of former Mayor Eric Adams unveiled<\/a> six attractive new and Department of Buildings\u2013approved pedestrian protection designs conceived by individual teams led by Arup and PAU as part of an initiative meant to \u201cimprove the aesthetic of city streets\u201d while safeguarding the public from \u201cpotential overhead hazards.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Photo \u00a9 Bridgit Beyer<\/p>\n \n While these new-and-improved, city-sanctioned sidewalk sheds have yet to be implemented (Adams\u2019 successor Zohran Mamdami has launched his own scaffolding reform<\/a> campaign), Prada has taken it upon itself to set an impressively high bar with a \u201cbespoke, temporary wrapper\u201d currently up on the two exposed facades of the Italian luxury brand\u2019s New York flagship at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street. In place for an indeterminate amount of time while the building is renovated, the ephemeral installation incorporates all the standard elements of New York City scaffolding\u2014sidewalk shed, pipe construction, debris netting, and lighting\u2014 while producing a mesmerizing, constantly shifting moir\u00e9\u00a0effect with the use of a dual-layered, semi-transparent scrim made from architectural mesh with printed variations of an abstracted construction fencing pattern. Although the camouflaged facades appear static from a distance, an optical illusion reveals itself when one comes closer to the building as the surface shifts depending on changing light, viewing angle, and other conditions. At night, the scrim fades away as an LED lighting grid aligned with the scaffold illuminates the pipe framework largely concealed beneath. Timeless and functional, the scaffolding is unmistakably Prada, right down to its seafoam-green hue.\n<\/p>\n \n The system was conceived by Prada with multidisciplinary studio 2×4 <\/a>as part of a longtime spatial design partnership that can be traced back to the brand\u2019s early creative collaborations with OMA. Knowing that the scaffolding might be up for a while, Prada \u201cwanted to make something that felt more permanent, more architectural,\u201d explains architect Christopher Kupski, a principal and group creative director at 2×4. \u201cThey\u2019re always looking at ideas where banal materials take on an uncanny appearance or something that’s very industrial and then making it refined.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Photo \u00a9 Bridgit Beyer<\/p>\n Photo \u00a9 Bridgit Beyer<\/p>\n \n In its approach, the 2×4 team, working in collaboration with Queens-based contractor Spring Scaffolding, facade mesh fabricator Britten, and lighting designer TM, set out to create a long-lasting solution by rethinking the components of scaffolding through \u201cthe lens of Prada\u201d without creating a spectacle Kupski says. (The approach is certainly more understated than the one taken just up the block<\/a> at Louis Vuitton).\n<\/p>\n Photo \u00a9 Bridgit Beyer<\/p>\n \n To clarify, the color of the scaffolding\u2019s outer mesh layers isn\u2019t exactly the\u00a0Prada green. To emphasize the complex transparency of the design, the 2×4 team took the color values of the brand\u2019s signature hue used in the boutique\u2019s interior and shifted the brightness and saturation to create an array of several different greens used throughout the scrim. \u201cWhen laid on top of each other, the colors feel more complementary to the original Prada green, whereas using the actual Prada green didn’t feel as much so because of the effect that\u2019s happening,\u201d says Kupski.\n<\/p>\n \n \u201cThere’s always been a spirit of exploration in the brand\u2014to shine a new light on everyday objects in some way,\u201d he adds.\n<\/p>\n Scrim design process images. Photos courtesy 2×4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2715 New York City is currently undergoing a sidewalk shed revolution. One of the more ubiquitous and unsightly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-189834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-city-news","12":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"prada](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Prada-5th-Ave-Scaffolding-High-Res-TIFF-6.jpeg\"\/ "\\"prada")
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