Who Knew Scaffolding Could Be So Mesmerizing?
"Don't forget to look up!" If you've been to New York City, you've been told this at least once. But where it really applies is Hong Kong. There, a tilt of the head doesn't just reveal looming skyscrapers but buildings enshrouded head to toe in vibrant fabric. "My immediate thought was that the environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude were in Hong Kong wrapping buildings," writes photographer Peter Steinhauer in the introduction of his new book, Cocoons ($65, Powerhouse Books), a compendium of the city's colorful scaffolding. He soon realized that what he was seeing was simply buildings under construction, covered in bamboo scaffolding wrapped in material to keep debris from falling to the street.
Even though they weren't really art installations, Peter found himself enthralled by their presence and doing whatever it took to document them with the perfect shot. "During the day, I felt these structures were like giant, wrapped color packages, within a mostly monochromatic environment," he writes. "At night, they took on a totally different feel: one of a sci-fi-type structure, lit up by sodium vapor construction lights (which turn orange on film or digital exposures) mixed with the lights on the apartments inside where there was life. It was mysterious and off, but completely fascinating."
Flipping through the 100 photographs featured in Cocoons, we too feel drawn in by the buildings' otherworldly quality. This being Clever, we can't help but connect the structures back to the decorating world. The swathes of material swoop in a way that reminds us of old-school draperies—but ten times cooler, given the fabric's transparency and outrageously bright hues. And those colors. You know we love hyper blue, but we've been seriously considering whether or not a super-saturated kelly green can be the color of 2019. Scaffolding as interiors inspo—who would've thought?
