Suspended over Interstate Eighty-Four, the Eighty Second Avenue overpass is a complex environment where pedestrians, vehicles, and public transit all converge. What evolved was a pattern where hundreds, if not thousands, of pedestrians and transit-users would subconsciously risk their safety for a seemingly convenient connection.
     A number of residents and government agencies concluded that a solution was needed. After some study, it was determined that a safety median that would include a partial height barrier with a fence on top, was needed to address the current crossing pattern and provide a safe alternative. With the understanding that this solution could cause a negative psychological perception of its purpose, the city invited our team to develop an artistic solution that would present the project in a way that would garner a positive response from the community.
     For us, the opportunity at hand was to capture the existing situation, and to develop an intervention that would continuously engage the public’s awareness of the activity around them. To do this we asked ourselves these questions:  How can a fence or boundary be open? How can the immediate community, as well as the site users, embrace this new element as a vibrant gateway that interacts with their every day movement?
     The site, being located in the middle of a roadway, presented a significant number of safety parameters required by multiple public agencies, all of which would need to be addressed in our design. The most important of these restrictions was to provide a minimum of sixty-five percent visibility while maintaining openings no larger than six inches. This was necessary to allow visibility for pedestrians, drivers, and law enforcement. Maintaining the openness of the boundary, while allowing it to visually close at key moments, presented an interesting challenge. Through our observations, we found that the horizontal elements that typically tie a fence together are what create a perception of being contained.  To avoid this, our focus turned towards developing a way to create a horizontal field using vertical elements.
     We looked toward common roadway devices that visually create boundaries and direct views in a vertical manner. Highway glare fins are one example of this, yet are limited by their fixed planar nature. We found that an array of vertical poles arranged in a diagonal pattern, would create a series of points that would expand and contract visually. The degree of this transparency would be based on the individuals’ location, angle, and speed of movement in relation to the 

boundary. To add depth, the use of color would be informed by mapping the density of the current pedestrian crossings, and in turn, create visual density. This would serve as a reference to prior movements, as well as to create the perception of redirection.
     Through structural and crash performance testing, it was determined that a clear polycarbonate tube could be used as our pole material. This presented an opportunity to play with literal transparency along with the new color density. We developed a series of color schemes to be applied to the poles that would address the sloped characteristics of the site and the redirection of movement in varied ways. To ensure community input, these options where presented through a public open house.  Large format presentations and 3-D fly-throughs allowed community members to understand the impact the new sculpture would have.  The result was a significant level of support for this sculptural approach to the median treatment, with a final hybrid solution being developed from a thorough survey of community comments and preferences. While lighting was discussed as a crucial element for the project’s success, it was not originally budgeted.  The positive response to the sculpture's role led our agency partners to find ways to fund and incorporate lighting.  After thorough research and full scale testing of lighting strategies, it was decided that vibrant and cost effective LED linear fixtures would illuminate the full length of the sculpture in a graceful and uplifting manner.
     This intervention on Eighty Second Avenue is not one that we have taken lightly.  It presented us with an amazing challenge and responsibility as designers. We took a highly political, social, and technically complex situation, and created a solution that directly addresses both physical and psychological constraints by turning them into opportunities.  Typically, in an environment such as the overpass, off-the-shelf solutions lend themselves to being isolated and disconnected, eventually fading into the background. This limits the relevance of a solution by only having a singular identity.  The Eighty Second Avenue Median Sculpture is rooted in the goal of creating a significant element in the public environment that responds to, and engages in its context and use.  By blurring the boundaries among art, design, and engineering through a collaborative and consensus-building process, what was formerly seen as a "barrier" could become a dynamic landmark. An identity would evolve with each new experience, defining this important gateway that has always existed, yet never been embraced.