Manhattan, NY – The city’s infrastructure is crumbling, and there are few funds for repairs, but one artist may have a solution: Legos.
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Two weeks ago, German artist Jan Vormann and a team of volunteers began filling in cracks in city buildings with the plastic building blocks.
The repairs across the city were done as part of Vormann’s “Dispatchwork” project.
“The combination of stone bricks and plastic bricks creates all kind of different contrasts that, in my eyes, illuminate relationships between aesthetics and functionality,” the artist said.
Using the colorful blocks, Vormann has repaired centuries-old buildings in Europe, as well as the wall of a fast-food restaurant across from Penn Station.
The Lego patches were designed to fit precisely into holes in the walls surrounding Bryant and Central parks, as well as building facades in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
By yesterday, only the patch on the corner of 32nd Street and Seventh Avenue remained. The others had been removed.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before. It’s cool,” said Anna Marciano, 20, admiring the 1-by-1-foot patch. “They should put more around the city.”
Vormann wrote on his Web site, “I went to New York City . . . to support Mayor Bloomberg in his everyday struggle to make this city even more amazing.”
It was unclear whether the city had any role in the removal of the Legos. A spokeswoman for Bloomberg declined to comment.
Shopkeepers at a SoHo boutique where a patch had been placed said they were disappointed it had been removed.
“I liked it. It’s a nice public-art project,” said Francesca Gentile, a saleswoman at Milan Luxury. “It was nice to have it in this neighborhood where everything is corporate. I wish it were still here.”
Only one block remained yesterday of a patch that had been fitted on a Central Park wall on the Upper East Side.
Jackie Rubenstein, 31, said she couldn’t believe she had walked by it for days without noticing.
“That’s a New York thing. There are random things all across the city, but we’re so quick getting around that we tend not to notice them.”
That’s funny!
That picture doesn’t look like Legos. It looks a cheaper imitation.
This is what I call art!
wow this is better then those curtains in central park and the waterfalls last year, just think of how many millions will come from all across the world to see this “art”
I wonder if the patches were removed by the property owners or stolen by children (or adults) passing by.
Wow, this is really interesting – thank you for this article! I noticed lots of broken corners and such, and Lego’s are a great way to fill them in! Personally I would have used bricks of similar color to the building to avoid attracting overt attention, but hey, it’s the artist’s choice (I’m an engineer.) I also would have glued the blocks in place… or at least put a GPS tracker on them.
probably they were stolen, Legos is an expensive toy. Can earthquake proof buildings be built with them?
Stupid. Look to what are has degenerated, itt would cute if my 2 year old did it, not thirty year old’s on roller blades.
Don’t worry the DOB will find ways to fine them!!
Why not, you can build a Succah with Soda crates, Lincoln logs or Legos.
I think this is great and how the legos/bricks disappered should be put back