Less Times Square is more Times Square

New York’s Times Square is the top tourist attraction in the world according to Travel and Leisure magazine. A new proposal by Snøhetta that will remake the area’s pedestrian plazas promises to bring a more urbane sensibility to the Square that might play well with the locals. The plan, which would be completed in 2014, calls for both a futuristic, streamlined look and a noirish quality that evokes the square’s colorful and occasionally illicit past.

"The new design is intended to simplify and declutter. The purpose of the Reconstruction of Times Square is three-fold: to upgrade crucial infrastructure: to provide event infrastructure for new and expanded public events: and to make permanent the temporary improvements that the City piloted in 2009. The objective of the new design is to achieve these goals in a way that creates an integrated safe and iconic multifunctional public space that reflects the best of Times Square and New York City"

Snøhetta

Snøhetta’s Craig Dkyers, who presented the design to a Manhattan community board on Monday September 26, said the redesign will make the plaza "simpler and flatter" than what’s there now. And it will be designed to accommodate "different speeds at which people can move through Times Square".

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More information

Craig Dykers, Kjetil Thorsen. Snøhetta

Snøhetta is an integrated architecture, landscape, and interior design company based in Oslo, Norway, and New York City, formed in 1989 and led by principals Craig Dykers and Kjetil Thorsen. The firm, founded in 1989, which is named after one of Norway's highest mountain peaks, has approximately 100 staff members working on projects around the world. The practice pursues a collaborative, transdisciplinary approach, with people from multiple professions working together to explore diverse perspectives on each project.

Snøhetta has completed several critically acclaimed cultural projects, including the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt; the National Opera and Ballet in Oslo, Norway; and the Lillehammer Art Museum in Norway. Current projects include the National September 11 Memorial Museum Pavilion at the World Trade Center site in New York.

In 2004 Snøhetta received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and in 2009 the firm was honored with the Mies van der Rohe Award. Snøhetta is the only company to have twice won the World Architecture Award for best cultural building, in 2002 for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and in 2008 for the National Opera and Ballet in Oslo.

Snøhetta

Published on: October 4, 2011

Cite: "Less Times Square is more Times Square" METALOCUS. Accessed

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