Explore the New York City Which Could've Been With the Phantom City iPhone App [IPhone Apps]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/Tm7hNVH3G3Q/explore-the-new-york-city-which-couldve-been-with-the-phantom-city-iphone-app

NYC is where what-could've-beens live. But if it's the architecture related musings that intrigue you, then you can at least find answers to the wonder-what-would've-been-on-this-street-corner. Walk around NYC with the Phantom City app running and you'll see designs and dreams.

You'll see broken and unrealized dreams, that is. With Museum of the Phantom City, an public art project of an app sponsored by the Van Alen Institute, you can explore the various "images and descriptions of speculative projects" for New York City. BLDGBLOG even romanticizes the entire adventure (and justly so):

You walk past a certain corner on the Upper West Side and your iPhone starts to ring: you're being called by a missing building... Absent structures detected in a wireless blur, leaving messages for you (complete with call-back number).

Missing buildings calling to you, potential designs chirping to make themselves known. It's almost enough to make me book a flight and go for a stroll through Manhattan.

Actually, I may just have to book that flight anyway, because the app's dowsing rod-like nature demands proximity to the buildings to view any information or images. Otherwise there's a cold "Out of Range" popup. Time to pack a bag. [Phantom City via BLDGBLOG]