Public Escape focuses on the area around Madison Square and its history as a center of image production. Currently, the neighborhood is characterized by a wide range of disparate programs, spanning from high-end hotels to manufacturing. Despite their adjacency, these programs largely operate without overlap. As a response to this disconnect, the intervention fills the space behind and between existing buildings with a network of pathways and flex spaces–designed in the language of New York City fire escapes—to bridge the gap both physically and socially. In conversation with the area’s legacy of image production, the pathways are shrouded in a system of cables that create a unique visual experience. The shifting alignment of cables obscure and reveal as one moves through the space, occasionally peeling back to allow views across the void and out into the city. This intervention aims to disrupt our current mode of perception and in this disruption encourage a searching to discover new spaces, new visual experiences, and new connections.