Global Design New York University: SPOTLIGHT: Snohetta Transforms Times Square

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

SPOTLIGHT: Snohetta Transforms Times Square

Snøhetta is an international architecture, landscape architecture, and interior design office based in Oslo, Norway and New York City. Snohetta's current project is the $55 million transformation of Times Square, between Broadway and 7th Avenue, and 42nd and 47th street.

The transformation comes with THREE pragmatic/aesthetic alterations:

Surface Material:

Snohetta plans to "create an uninterrupted and cohesive surface, reinforcing the square’s iconic role as an outdoor stage for entertainment, culture and urban life." The new surface is a "two-toned custom pavers embedded with nickel-sized steel disks."

Benches:

Benches are the infrastructural spine for events that act as magnets, orienting visitors around the defined pedestrian zones. "Pre-cast concrete pavers and granite benches will replace the temporary street paint, chairs and tables originally put in place by the NYC Department of Transportation."

Pedestrian Space:

The design calls for "vehicle-laden streets" to be transformed into "pedestrian-only public spaces." Snohetta hopes this will increase bipedal users, while concordantly bringing the public into nearby stores and venues.

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Jose Luis Gabriel Cruz. "Snohetta Makes Times Square Permanently Pedestrian" 09 Jan 2014. ArchDaily. Accessed 14 Jan 2014. <http://www.archdaily.com/?p=465343>

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MISSION

Global warming effects pose new challenges to the architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design communities. The immediate response has been a turn toward a host of energy-saving technologies. What has rarely been addressed, however, is the problem of scale. How can the designer make sure that global solutions do not come at the expense of local traditions, cultures, and environments? By placing human rational, emotional, technological, and social needs at the center of our environmental concerns, we propose a new GLOBAL [Global Local Open Border Architecture and Landscape] design initiative.

We seek a Global yet still Local design that can Open the sociopolitical Borders that all too often separate Architecture from its Landscape. The overreaching aim is to develop a language of design that can create proximity between individual responsibility and the current global environmental crisis. We see environmental problems as a crisis of human alienation from the natural world, and our initiative will explore ways in which design can reformat the unfortunate separation. In our plea for proximity between the individual and the global we will explore, in the words of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a design that is "as close to the beyond as to things near" when we evoke "our power to imagine ourselves elsewhere."