The More You Look, the More You See: Javi Aznarez Brings Hudson Square Yards to Life
The usually buttoned-up architecture of New York’s Hudson Square has loosened its tie, thanks to a bold new visual campaign illustrated by Javi Aznarez. Known for his sinuous lines and cinematic style—think The French Dispatch meets Saul Steinberg—Aznarez has injected a theatrical flair into the Manhattan neighbourhood as part of a public-facing rebrand of Hudson Square Yards.
The campaign, now unveiled in full photographic glory across the site and online, features a suite of large-scale illustrations that wrap entire buildings, hoardings, and street-level barricades. Each composition features Aznarez’s signature figures—eyes wide, suits rumpled, limbs slightly too long—wandering through a dreamlike version of downtown Manhattan. There’s a woman reading a newspaper under scaffolding, a besuited man walking a dog that looks like a Matisse cut-out, and a cello player mid-solo surrounded by floating skyscrapers.
Commissioned by Hudson Square Properties and produced in collaboration with local design studio Allis Studio, the campaign brings together Aznarez’s talent for visual storytelling with the gritty surrealism of the NYC street.
It marks one of the Javi’s largest public commissions in the U.S. to date and gives Hudson Square’s redevelopment a much-needed jolt of narrative charm.
Javi joins a growing list of illustrators redefining the American urban scape, alongside Jean Jullien’s murals in LA, Abbey Lossing’s work for NYC Parks and more recently Alain Pilon’s "Mystery at the grooms" for HERMÈS New York.
