it's quite bold, and I applaud the management for not shooting it down, especially considering their initial front page was very jarring to looking at. But they've refined the design quickly to get to where it is now.
The Specials page like the one OP posted particularly nice, and it's just an FU to the prevailing sterile flat white design. The irony is, there has never been better time to use dropshadow, gradients, and transparency via CSS. But nobody is using it.
Many people are using them, just more subtly than you might think. Projects like Google's material design may seem 'flat' to the lay person, but it's full of delicate transparencies, animations and shadows. It's leveraging the technology, but in a very understated way.
I love it. It's beautiful and dramatic without hijacking scrolling or doing anything else annoying (that I noticed). The project is fascinating, and is a few blocks from where I grew up - I can hardly wait for the chance to visit this.
It's a great testament to the how NYC has improved that this is even possible. In the 1980's, just the notion of doing something like this as a public park would be laughed out of the room.
