Construction site, London, July 2008

The hook – a huge metal piece that moves through the site at all heights – is painted Day-Glo orange to increase the likelihood that people will see it, and avoid it.

Miami Beach construction, June 2008

Visitors to Miami Beach encounter hotels (and other architecture) that is old and new Art Deco, as well as various modernist and post-modernist successors (see examples here). This construction site with its orange and stainless look fit nicely with the finished aesthetic seen in the area (note the similarly colored building in the left corner).

Previously:

• Body Image Norms: Miami
• Rum Culture

More Miami photos here.

Trash receptacles such as this are very common in Paris. The words on the bag translate as Vigilance and Cleanliness. The bag is transparent so anything discarded is still visible. London, presumably because they have more recently experienced terrorist bombings, has no (or almost no) rubbish containers.

Paris uses painted metal barricades…

…while London uses these open-structured plastic segments to block off areas for construction. Other than path dependence (that’s just how they’ve always done it), why?

We’re located near the Pacific Ocean, where Highway 1 scoots along past small towns like ours, and then zips long a crazy road known as Devil’s Slide, with a mountain to the east and a cliff edge to the left. A tunnel is being built (after decades of controversy and planning) but most of the progress is hidden by the mountain itself. Not to mention that as you drive along at breakneck speed, it behooves you not to peer too closely at whatever is not the road itself.

So what are they building in there? Well, Caltrans, in a remarkable display of transparency, has photographers who document the work as it progresses. The pictures are really amazing, showing the people, the process, and the previously hidden environment. For some these are simply your usual construction photos, but for people who drive by there every day, waiting for the tunnel to open (2011 or something) and have little sense of the work behind the scenes, this is a really wonderful peek. There are tons and tons of pictures to browse, and I’ve nicked a few, below.

click to enlarge picture

Work on Devil’s Slide has officially begun and someone put up a banner adjacent to the Gray Whale Cove parking lot.