560 Lexington Avenue
Role: Designer | 2013-2014
SOM
Constructed in the 1980s, this Privately Owned Public Space and subway entrance was dark and uninviting. The intervention brightened this public space by incorporating a light palette of limestone, white granite, and stainless steel. A highly transparent glass and steel subway enclosure provides visibility and openness throughout the plaza. This curvilinear structure features benches and a glass swing gate engineered to nest in the concave form of the enclosure. Below, the enclosure’s curving geometry continues with undulating limestone walls and glass guardrails, inviting pedestrians down a sweeping staircase to the subway and Public Library branch beyond.
Rendering
Before
Personal Role
My role was specifcally to design benches around the subway opening. The solid stainless plate benches were to meet the bean-shaped cantilevered glass with tangential, seamless geometry. The challenge here was how to document the shape .
I had perfected and rendered. Digitally this was done through a series of splines, but the office had no experience with putting this down on paper. Through some self-initiated research I was able to develop a way to rationally draw the splines through a series of coordinates and a careful definition. The end product is a successful and eerily accurate match to the original design intent and imagery.
