There are two different ways for choosing a site. In one scenario, the artists have a specific building, structure or location in mind – such as the Pont-Neuf in Paris or the Reichstag in Berlin. In a second scenario, the artists have an idea for a project, but do not know where it will be physically located.
A good example of this scenario is in the project, for Over The River, Project for the Arkansas River, State of Colorado. In this case, Christo and Jeanne-Claude knew fabric would be suspended over a river, but they did not know which river would work best. Early renditions of what the artists envisioned were created by Christo in the form of drawings and collages that use an imaginary landscape. They drove 14,000 miles in the Rocky Mountains and inspected 89 rivers in search of the river that would provide all the characteristics they were looking for. After all of this research, they decided that the Arkansas River in the state of Colorado best fit the needs for the project.