X is for Love

Times Square, New York, New York
2019

Awards
2020 AIA Film Challenge Finalist
2019 NYCxDesign Awards Project Finalist, Exhibition/Installation

Installed in Times Square, New York City’s most public space, X is a sculpture that celebrates love, justice and equality. The two converging planes together make an iconic “X,” which, when met at their intersection by a cylindrical volume, create a heart-shaped space. For us the message is: at the meeting of difference and division, when justice, equality and democracy are inserted, love can be created.

As a public centerpiece, “X” seeks to foster bipartisan conversations and performances on justice, democracy, equality, and love in our current context of polarization and rising xenophobia.

At 20 feet tall, this is taller than the average installation. We felt the height works strongly with the proportions of the space and site, and allows the viewer to inhabit the work and the viewing distance to discover the heart shape within the X. 

As the public engages with the sculpture and steps on the platform of the X, the heart and the edges light up—the more people inhabiting the space, the brighter the light. Along the visible interior, words and phrases such as “Democracy,” “Equality,” and “Don’t forget the flowers!”  are inscribed, as if on the inner band of a wedding ring, to be discovered as the viewer approaches the work.

Materially, the structure is light, reflective and luminous: made of laminated layers of reflective structural honeycombed aluminum. The X glows; a powerful, playful, easily recognizable contribution to Valentine’s Day in New York and the meaning of Love in public space. 

X is for Love.