You walk under the scaffolding and the sidewalk becomes a tunnel and the tunnel is temporary but the temporary lasts for years. The scaffolding goes up in a day and comes down in a decade and the decade is the lie that every building owner tells when the permits are filed. The scaffolding is steel pipes and wooden planks and green netting and the green netting is the veil and the veil hides the work. You cannot see the building behind the scaffolding and the not seeing is the point because the building behind the scaffolding is ugly right now. The building is being fixed or cleaned or demolished and all three look the same from the sidewalk.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin in nineteen ninety five with a hundred thousand square meters of silver fabric and the wrapping took two weeks and five million marks and the wrapping was scaffolding made into art. The Reichstag had been a ruin and then a renovation and the wrapping was the pause between the ruin and the rebirth. Christo understood that the scaffolding is the most interesting moment in a building's life because the scaffolding is the moment when the building is becoming something else. The building that is finished is boring. The building that is wrapped is a question and the question is what will it be and the what will it be is the art.

The scaffolding on the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona has been there since eighteen eighty two. Antoni Gaudi started the building and Gaudi died in nineteen twenty six and the building was not finished and the building is still not finished and the scaffolding has been there for a hundred and forty two years. The scaffolding is older than most buildings. The scaffolding has become part of the architecture because the scaffolding has been there so long that no one alive remembers the building without it. The Sagrada Familia is a cathedral that is also a construction site and the construction site is the pilgrimage. You travel to Barcelona to see a building that is being built and the being built is the miracle. The finished building will be less interesting than the scaffolding.

In New York the scaffolding covers three hundred miles of sidewalk at any given time and the three hundred miles is a city within the city. The scaffolding creates a corridor and the corridor has its own weather. The rain does not reach you under the scaffolding but the dripping does and the dripping is worse than the rain because the dripping is targeted. The scaffolding attracts vendors and the vendors set up tables and the tables sell sunglasses and phone cases and the selling is commerce that exists only because the scaffolding created a roof and the roof created a market and the market is the oldest story in the world. Put a roof over a sidewalk and someone will sell something under it.

You walk out from under the scaffolding and the sky comes back and the sky coming back is the reminder that the scaffolding is not the world. The scaffolding is the parenthesis. The scaffolding is the city's way of saying we are working on it and the working on it is the promise and the promise is that the building will be better when the scaffolding comes down. The scaffolding always comes down. Eventually. The coming down is the reveal and the reveal is always disappointing because the scaffolding promised something extraordinary and the building delivers something ordinary and the ordinary is what the city is made of. The ordinary building without scaffolding. The finished thing. The thing that does not need help anymore.