Times Square Arts has announced that MODU and Eric Forman Studio’s Heart Squared is the winner of this year’s annual Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition curated by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. As this year’s winning design, Heart Squared will be unveiled on January 30 at 11am at Father Duffy Square, between 46th and 47th Streets. The installation will remain on view for the month of February. Interested in renewing vows? Proposing? How about getting married ~ all on Duffy Square, info below.
Tilted in various directions within a steel frame that evokes the outline of an anatomic heart, the 125 mirrors of Heart Squared transform the spectacle of Times Square into kaleidoscopic images of people, buildings, and brightly-lit billboards. While the position of each mirror seems random, the designers developed a specialized technique to calculate the specific angles in order to hide a playful surprise. As viewers move around the structure towards a special marked location, those hundreds of reflections suddenly coalesce, revealing a pixel heart of urban life surrounded by a field of mirrored sky.
Heart Squared brings people together to discover the heart within — a heart that reflects anyone and everyone who engages with it, its colors and composition changing as the sun rises and sets, as billboard lights and screens shift, and as thousands of people pass through the space. Viewers can interact spontaneously with one another through the mirrors or find their own experiences within the piece, celebrating their love of the city and the incredible diversity of people within it.
This marks the 12th anniversary of the Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition, an annual event where Times Square Arts invites architecture and design firms to submit proposals for a public art installation celebrating Love in Times Square in February. Situated in front of the Red Steps each year, the Valentine Heart continues Times Square’s commitment to celebrating great design — a commitment exemplified by the Red Steps themselves, which have won multiple architecture awards; by the Times Square Design Lab initiative; and by Times Square’s connection to events like NYCxDESIGN, which has stationed its Design Pavilion on the Broadway Plazas for the past three years.
On February 25th, Cooper Hewitt will host a public program with the designers to delve deeper into the design process story and explore the work in the greater context of public art and design installations.
Heart Squared represents the collective heart of the city and as such, is an engaging civic statement about celebrating our differences and bringing people together in a fundamentally inclusive way,” said MODU.
“We are using the magic of mirrors and light to remix the urban spectacle into something unexpected, to give people a new way to see the city — and each other,” said Eric Forman Studio.
Tim Tompkins, President of the Times Square Alliance, said “MODU and Eric Forman Studio’s design, Heart Squared, shapes the imagery of Times Square’s iconic screens, diverse people, and ever-shining lights, turning a mirror on what draws so many of us together: the city itself.”
“As America’s Design Museum, Cooper Hewitt is delighted to collaborate with Times Square Arts to infuse inclusive and accessible design at the Crossroads of the World,” said Caroline Baumann, director of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. “Through its innovative use of mirrors to create a kaleidoscopic portrait of urban life, MODU and Eric Forman Studio’s Heart Squared demonstrates the power of design to foster community and spark connections.”
The proposals for the 2020 Valentine Heart Design Competition were reviewed by representatives from the Valentine Heart Selection Committee and Sean Anderson, Associate Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, MoMA; Victor Calise, Commissioner, Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities; Jean Cooney, Director, Times Square Arts; Kevin Davey, Director, UAP Company; Wendy Feuer, Assistant Commissioner Urban Design + Art + Wayfinding, NYC DOT; Jennifer Lantzas, Deputy Director of Public Art, NYC Parks; Andrea Lipps, Contemporary Design Curator, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Nadine Maleh, Executive Director, Capital Projects, Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, Board Member and former Executive Director, Institute for Public Architecture; Suchi Reddy, Founder, Reddymade (2019 Valentine Heart Design Competition winner); Tim Tompkins, President, Times Square Alliance.
Now for the Free Ticketed Events to be held on Valentine’s Day ~ Weddings ~ Proposals ~ Vow Renewal, all held on February 14th at Duffy Square. Be sure to secure your Tickets.
Phu Hoang and Rachely Rotem have led MODU since its founding in 2012. They were awarded the 2017 Founders Rome Prize in Architecture, since 1897 an annual prize to those ”who represent the highest standards of excellence in the arts and humanities.” Recently, they have also been awarded the Emerging Voices award from the Architectural League of New York (2019) and the US-Japan Creative Artists fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (2018).
Eric Forman is a Brooklyn-based artist and designer working at the intersections between fine art, design, architecture, and new technology. Eric started programming as a child in the 1980s and was an early member of the groundbreaking online media entity Pseudo Programs in the mid 1990s. Eric Forman Studio was founded in 2003, and in 2012 was invited to be a founding member of New Lab, a next generation innovation space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. His studio’s design practice specializes in the latest interactive experiences and digital fabrication techniques for diverse clients.
Heart Squared marks the 12th Anniversary of the Times Square Heart Design Competition. The installation will be on view from January 30 through February 28, 2020 in Times Square at Father Duffy Square between 46th/47th Streets.
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