The Bower
Park Avenue and Foley Square, ManhattanComissioned by NYC DOT Art Program for Summer Streets 2026
Shelter and artwork at once, and proof that climate-responsive design can bring people together.
Summers in New York are getting hotter, and shade isn't just a nice-to-have anymore. It's something we all need. Heat doesn't hit everyone the same way either: kids, older adults, outdoor workers, and anyone without easy access to air conditioning feel it first and hardest. The Bower grew out of that reality, a temporary, interactive installation exploring how something as simple as shade can become a form of public infrastructure, one that makes our streets a little more livable for everyone.
The project takes its name from an old idea found across cultures: the bower, a refuge made from trees, climbing plants, and overlapping canopies that has offered shelter and a place to gather for centuries. We didn't want to recreate a bower literally. We wanted to capture its spirit, softness, filtered light, a sense of enclosure, and translate that into a lightweight structure we could build up each morning and take down each evening.
An inflatable canopy on a steel frame cast a field of dappled shade that kept shifting all day, changing within minutes. Underneath, visitors picked up chalk and traced the light and shadow as it moved around them. By the end of the afternoon, the pavement had turned into a mural made by hundreds of New Yorkers. It became a sweet little pocket of the city where people could pause, play, and just be together.
Each evening, it all washed away. The chalk disappeared, the street went back to normal, and we packed everything up to do it again the next Saturday. That impermanence was part of the magic. The Bower gets built, lived in, transformed, and erased, all within a single day.
Engineering Consultant: Five Phase Engineering
Production: Michele De Maria
Assistants: Ian Rivera, Eli Perez, Zee Guaba, Ursula Andreeff
Photography: Carlos Galek Sefchovich & Elsa Ponce