The Sandpit New York- or Everyday is Beautiful

Probably the beauty of the product lies not in the subject of the product, but in the way it is done. Might not be the latest headline, but there is something to this. Can one build nice highways, is it possible to design a meaningful park and ride or can a disused railway lines turned into a park? Well you must have guessed it by now, I am thinking of specific examples here. Even though it is probably a lot easier to come up with terrible examples for infrastructure projects, you probably only have to look out the window, there are some really 'knock you out of your shoes' examples of good practice. A great collection is put together in the book 'the Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure', published by NAi Publishers.


Image taken from Archphoto / A view of the Swiss highway A16.

And of course here are the examples I was thinking of, 'Tunnel Artifices', highway projects by Flora Ruchat-Roncati and Renato Salvi 1988-2008, realized in Switzerland; 'Terminal Hoenheim Nord' by Zaha Hadid Architects 1999-2001, realized in Strassbourg, France; or the 'High-Line' by Dillier Scofidio + Renfro with James Corner Field Operations 2005-2010, in New York, USA.
And actually New York was what I wanted to get at, to introduce this beautiful timeLapse. A day in the Sandpit of the big Apple portrayed so beautifully the everyday situations that it lives up greatly to the examples give. Everyday life is beautiful, no matter what.