I took this picture on a recent trip to New York:

I liked the mid-block building and so I wanted to document it. That’s what I do when I walk around a city.

When I went back to research the project later on, I then discovered that it was developed by DDG Partners, which I have been following for years. I think they do terrific work and I love their vertically-integrated approach to real estate development. Two years ago I mentioned them in a post called: 3 architects operating as developers.

If you’d like to learn more about the project, you can do that here. It’s called 345MEATPACKING. 

What I want to talk about today is how they wrapped the building during construction. Working with the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama – who at the time had an exhibition going on at the Whitney – they created a 120-foot reproduction of her painting Yellow Trees.

Here’s a video of what that looked like (c. 2012). If you can’t see the video below, click here.

What a great idea. But don’t tell anyone. I want to steal the idea for one of my projects.