Brooklyn-based architect and artist Elsa Ponce’s The Bower considers shade as an essential form of urban care. Commissioned by the NYC DOT Art Program for Summer Streets 2026, the temporary installation creates a shaded public space where visitors can rest, draw, and gather beneath a canopy of clustered inflatable forms. The project responds to increasingly hot New York summers and the uneven availability of shade across the city. In neighborhoods such as Sunset Park, East Williamsburg, and Red Hook, where tree canopy can be scarce, parasols and other forms of sun protection have become part of everyday life. Shade is free, but access to it is not evenly distributed, affecting older adults, children, outdoor workers, and even pets.
The Bower at Foley Square during NYC Summer Streets | all images by Carlos Galek Sefchovich
Soft inflatable forms contrast with New York’s hard surfaces
The idea is also connected to the Mexican expression vete por la sombrita, roughly translated as ‘walk in the shade’. Familiar from Ponce’s upbringing in Mexico, the phrase extends beyond practical advice for avoiding the sun, functioning as a small gesture of affection and protection. This understanding of shade as care forms a central idea behind The Bower. The installation by architect and artist Elsa Ponce takes its name from leafy shelters found across cultures, where they have provided protection, respite, and places for social connection. Its geometry draws from the dappled shadows cast by trees, using a composition of mass and void to produce changing patterns of light and shade throughout the day.
Set against New York’s hard surfaces and rectilinear streetscape, The Bower introduces a deliberately soft architectural form. Clusters of inflatable elements hover above the pavement, filtering sunlight and creating a temporary landscape of shadow beneath them. The color palette references the jacaranda, a tree associated with Ponce’s memories of growing up in Mexico, with tones shifting from pale lilac to pastel pink as the sunlight changes. The temporary nature of Summer Streets also informed the construction. Designed to be installed and removed within a single day, The Bower had to remain lightweight and transportable while allowing a small crew to assemble it without specialized tools. For several hours, the structure converts a section of pavement into a temporary public room, providing a place to linger and interact within the street.
The Bower creates a temporary canopy of shade during NYC Summer Streets
Moving shadows become part of the soft lilac and pink canopy
The shaded area also functions as a participatory surface. Bags of colorful chalk allow visitors to contribute to a collective mural, with some tracing the shadows cast by the inflatable canopy as they move across the pavement, while others draw freely, experiment with color, or sit on stools and observe the work developing around them. The changing position of the sun becomes part of the installation. As shadows migrate across the pavement, new drawings follow their movement and individual marks accumulate into a record of the visitors passing through the space. Cyclists and outdoor workers also use the canopy as a place to pause and seek relief from the summer heat.
Presented across three Saturdays at Park Avenue and Foley Square, The Bower operates simultaneously as a public artwork, participatory space, and piece of climate-responsive infrastructure. Its temporary canopy demonstrates how shade can shape patterns of movement, occupation, and interaction in the city, while raising the question of whether access to shade should be considered an essential part of urban infrastructure rather than simply an amenity.
the installation creates a shaded public room within the city
the shaded canopy creates a place to pause, gather, and connect
light filters through the inflatable forms
view from beneath The Bower’s inflatable canopy
The Bower offers a temporary place of shade and respite in the public realm
visitors trace the canopy’s shifting shadows in chalk
sunlight passing through the canopy becomes part of the participatory drawing
visitors add to the evolving chalk mural beneath The Bower
a time-based chalk mural emerges through the shifting patterns of shade and sun
layers of chalk transform the ground beneath The Bower
project info:
name: The Bower
designer: Elsa Ponce
location: Park Avenue and Foley Square, New York, NY
commission: NYC DOT Art Summer Streets
engineering: Tory Struck, Five Phase Engineering
production: Michele De Maria
assistants: Ian Rivera, Eli Perez, Zee Guaba, Ursula Andreeff
photographer: Carlos Galek Sefchovich | @itiscarlitos
designboom has received this project from our DIY submissions feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. See more project submissions from our readers here.
edited by: Christina Vergopoulou | designboom
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