Pandemic Architecture

Pandemic Architecture: NYC Dining Sheds from 2020-2024, a photo essay by New Yorker Penny Hardy, captures a singular moment in time when restaurants were forced onto the streets of New York City to survive. Interiors once hidden from view were turned inside out.

Freed from conventional building regulations, a wildly varied landscape of outdoor dining structures emerged. Owners' personalities, tastes, fantasies, and construction skills were suddenly on display in a return to old-school punk, DIY values. It was a democracy of building the city had not seen in modern memory.

With commentary by Michael Bullock, Fred Bernstein and Robert Hammond.