The Museum of the Phantom City is a public art project that uses personal digital devices to transform the city into a living museum. The downloadable mobile app reveals visionary speculative design proposals for various sites in New York City – Buckminster Fuller’s dome over Midtown, for example, or Raymond Loewy’s helicopter landing field planted over Bryant Park, or Michael Sorkin’s scheme for a homeless colony on the West Side railyards. Architects Irene Cheng and Brett Snyder’s project explores how mobile technology might go beyond traditional navigational functions to transform the way we experience the city. Inspired by the Situationists who strived to make ordinary landscapes appear unfamiliar and strange, this “museum without walls” hopes to intensify urban experiences, introducing pleasure and mystery to the metropolitan condition.
- Projects
- 61st Street Farmers Market
- 78th Street Play Street
- 596 Acres
- ACTIVATE!
- 1415
- Air Quality Egg
- AirCasting
- Amphibious Architecture
- Aquaponics Container System
- Art in Odd Places
- ARTfarm
- Astoria Scum River Bridge
- Bartering and Sharing Networks
- Bat Cloud
- Bench Press
- Better Block
- BK Farmyards
- Brooklyn Night Bazaar
- Bubbleware
- Building Projections
- Bunchy Carter Park for the People
- By the City/For the City
- Campito
- Cart Coop
- chainlinkGREEN
- Chicago Rarities Orchard Project
- Chair-bombing
- The City from the Valley
- City Farm
- Cleveland Bridge Project
- City Sensing: Signal Spaces
- Come Out & Play Festival
- Community Living Room
- Crown Heights Participatory Urbanism
- Cut.Join.Play.
- Day Labor Station
- Depave
- Dérive App
- Dream It. Grow It.
- Detroit, Demolition, Disneyland
- Eco-Playground
- Edible Estates
- Edible Schoolyard
- Edible Wall
- Faubourg St. Roch Project
- Field Guide to Phytoremediation
- Flint Public Art Project
- For Squat / Reuben Kincaid Realty
- Fresh Moves Mobile Market
- Ghost Bikes
- GOOD Ideas for Cities
- Grassroots Mapping
- Greenaid Seedbomb Vending Machine
- Guerrilla Bike Lanes
- Guerrilla Drive-Ins
- Guerrilla Gardening
- Guerrilla Grafters
- Harvest Dome
- Holding Pattern
- Hypothetical Development Organization
- I Wish This Was
- ICE-POPS
- Iluminacción
- Imagination Playground
- Imaging Detroit
- Insert____Here
- Intersection Repair
- Islands of LA
- Kingshighway Skatepark
- KISS Popup Chapel
- LA Green Grounds
- Legal Waiting Zone
- LentSpace
- LightLane
- Linden Living Alley
- Local Code: Real Estates
- Local Previews
- Making Policy Public
- Marcus Prize Pavilion
- Moving Design: Civic Intervention
- Mobile Dumpster Pools
- Museum of the Phantom City
- MyBlockNYC
- Neighborland
- New Public Sites
- NY Street Advertising Takeover
- Notes for Anyone
- No Longer Empty
- Occupy Wall Street
- OpenPlans
- Paintings for Satellites
- Parking Plot
- Parklets
- Parkman Triangle Park
- Parkmobiles
- Participation Park
- People Make Parks
- Periscope Project
- Phone Booth Book Share
- Piazza Gratissima
- PHS Pops-Up Garden
- Pixelator
- Place It!
- Placemaking in Bronzeville
- Place Pulse
- Pop Up City
- Pop Up Lunch
- Pop-Up Art Loop
- Popularise: Build Your City
- popuphood
- Post Furniture
- Power Cart
- Power House
- proxy
- PUPstop Project
- QR_Hobo_Codes
- Queens Boulevard Intervention
- re:NEWS
- Red Swing Project
- San Francisco Garden Registry
- SeeClickFix
- Serendipitor
- Skipping Only Zones
- Soil Kitchen
- Spatial ConTXTs
- Stairway Stories
- Streetfilms
- Syracuse Downtown
- Tactical Urbanism Handbook
- TrafficCOM
- Ten New Historical Markers
- TERRITORY
- TreeKIT
- Trees, Cabs and Crime in San Francisco
- The Uni
- Version Festival 12
- Visionary Chicago
- Walk Raleigh: Guerrilla Wayfinding
- War Gastronomy: Recipes of Relocation
- #whOWNSpace
- Yarnbombing
- Teams
Cheng+Snyder
Museum of the Phantom City
New York City
2009 to present
Accessibility, Community, Information, Pleasure
10,000 – realized with support of Van Alen Institute fellowship
6 months – original version
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Problem - how can mobile media make a city’s hidden stories visible
Solution - let users view utopian architectural visions while standing on projects’ intended sites
