42nd Street Project
The scope of the project was to develop a concept to be applied to the walls of the subway passage that connected Grand Central Station and 42nd Street, in New York. Five designs were chosen as finalists, and each candidate presented their concept to the jury.
The inherent characteristics of the site presented a major challenge, but also provided the design solution.
The challenge:
- two walls with an immense expanse of square footage
- the height of the wall from the floor was only six feet before meeting metal protrusions
- vertical metal partitions divided the walls into units of approximately five feet in width
- a very small budget
Design solution:
Rather than trying to cover the metal partitions, I chose to treat them as dividers that defined multiple spaces of an identical size. The concept was to create identical square and triangular units that would occupy each space yet would vary.
To minimize production costs, ceramic tiles of exactly the same size and color would be fabricated off-site. They could be easily cleaned, and individual pieces could be replaced without redoing the entire wall. Like a puzzle, these pieces would be used to create each individual design unit on-site. The final design would provide a “still” animation, with the movement created by people passing through the space. Additional variations would be achieved by varying the depth of the square and triangular units. The single red square directly in the middle of each design is the one consistent element that remains throughout the installation.