I LOVE NEW YORK

—Proposal responding to the invitation of Times Square Arts through Times Square Alliance for the 2022 Times Square Design Competition—

During the pandemic we learned the single turned into the collective — I love New York bench is a reminder that together we can build strength or comfort, find beauty and warmth, ensure resilience and endurance and ignite love and kindness. Times Square is a place of imaginary urban landscapes, a display of world stage products and productions, financial markets, entertainment, assembly, connection, and encounter. It is a place that gathers people from all walks of life, from the (hyper) local to the global. Times Square remains a reference and meeting point that is flooded by people from New York City, across the country and around the world.

In the same way pixels create a digital image in the monumental screens of Times Square we use a material pixel (concrete block) to build an image of Love —an Ode to New York City. From the digital to the analog we wanted to honor the physicality of the working class, the backbone of the city. Most of the time concrete blocks get covered by other materials and are seldomly shown in its true nature. By exposing the block in its purest form and displaying the simplicity and beauty of its materiality we also enhance how resilient it can be, making an analogy of each individual New Yorker that builds up on the image of urban culture.

I, you, we, everybody loves NY, and together like pixels we composed an image of a city that is majestic, powerful, resilient, public, accessible and relevant for the times we are living —making us remember how much we love our city. Seen from above the I love New York bench is shaped as a heart, but experienced from below it is a bench that welcomes everybody. The piece seeks to enrich the city experience with an intervention of an urban-architectural character inviting everybody to inhabit and engage with the space —generating a programmatic extension of the urban plaza of Times Square, blurring the boundaries between permanent and temporary or public and private.

The piece is composed of a simple geometry that has two semi-circles and two straight lines to form the heart, generating an accessible space that is for the people on the ground but also for the people above in the skyscrapers. It uses 4,000 recycled concrete blocks and while the 8 foot walls of the towers are erected with mortar, the rest of the benches can operate through gravity, making it easier to recycle the blocks after the exhibition. This action makes possible for the the material to enter a circular economy and avoid generating more waste and pollution. Reinforcing the importance of the decisions we make as architects and designers in the selection of materials and definition of logistics in particular but also on the sourcing of goods and labor in general.

The I love New York bench invites all the different voices in the city to leave a message of hope, kindness, care, reflection and love. Understanding love as a political and social tool with agency to display a diverse community aiming for a more sustainable, inclusive and equal reality.