Roof for Times Square
Transforming a traffic island into a gracious urban room.
Photo by Lee Friedlander
(via NY Times)
“Father Duffy was of such dimensions that he made New York into a small town.”
—euology by Woolcut, 1932.
| Design | 1999 (late competition submission) |
| Collaborators | Klaus Leitner, Anatole Plotkin (renderings) |
Times Square, NY.
The tiny TKTS outpost is granted permanent protection under an open glass roof, which provides shelter for the daily queues of ticket buyers. The new structure reframes the square, while transforming the traffic island into a gracious urban room.
The wrought-iron pen around the war-hero priest, Father Francis P. Duffy (1871-1932) is removed, and replaced with a dias. Thus ennobled, the Father holds court under the new roof. The roof structure becomes a working grid from which scrims, lighting, and program elements are raised and lowered, completing the transformation from traffic island to “theater.”