The thin wooden walls that separate the “being built” worlds of China’s construction sites from the “already built” world of the surrounding sidewalks and neighborhoods can sometimes become impromptu canvases for quick, shorthand calculations, presumably drawn by the team members on the other side of the wall visually working through a problem together to create shared knowledge and understanding. 

A glimpse for pedestrians into what’s happening on the other side of the walls, raising questions as to how the different reasons/opportunities to visualize information for those outside of the walls/work. What could potentially emerge from a locally shared understanding of what’s happening within a construction site? 

Continuing the idea of the exteriors of construction sites as living, interactive surfaces, a trip around exurban Shanghai naturally brings one into contact with this megacity’s varied typology of construction site exteriors, a subject in and of itself worthy of further exploration. The design decisions of the color of netting, and whether to leave the scaffolding exposed or conceal everything behind the netting creates an interesting potential library of how structures-in-progress look as they spring out of the landscape. What information might live on the outsides of these giant, screen-like exteriors? What would you, as a pedestrian, want to know about what’s happening on the other side of screen if this were on your street?