Don’t Miss Toyota’s Ten-Story, Climbable Times Square Billboard

Today’s your last chance to catch three professional climbers and one “daredevil amateur” scale a 100-foot-tall billboard in Times Square. The three-dimensional advertisement is for Toyota’s new RAV4 Hybrid and features a scale-able rock-climbing wall that rises ten stories and is mounted along the northeast corner of the DoubleTree Hotel at 1568 Broadway (47th Street and 7th Avenue).

The wall has a 96-foot vertical climb with more than 100 hand holds for the team of five climbers, made up of Christina Fate and her fiance, RAV4 Rally driver Ryan Millen, David Morton, an expert climber and technical consultant for the project, and veteran ice climbers and mountain guides Eric and Adam Knoff.

According to a press release, the idea is an extension of the current RAV4 Hybrid “How Far Will You Take It” campaign whose basis is that people interested in this type of vehicle are also the type of people who seek out new and adventurous experiences.

Rendering of competition entry: Times Squared 3015 by Blake Freitas, Grace Chen, Alexi Kararavokiris. Courtesy of eVolo

It is to be hoped that Toyota’s billboard will spur more creative advertisements and campaigns along the great white way, which in recent years have mostly been limited to flashing images on enormous LED screens. Climbing skyscrapers isn’t new to the city, just doing so legally is. Perhaps some day the square could host similar and larger adventure venues for the public to enjoy. In last year’s annual eVolo Skyscraper Competition, an entry titled Times Squared 3015 (pictured above) envisioned a skyscraper of more than one mile in height that would contain a miniature mountain range for hiking, as well as a redwood forest. The city within a city would also contain a football stadium, vertical farms, and a beach, along with the usual mix of shops, offices and apartments.

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