Overview
Designed by The Office for Creative Research, We Were Strangers Too is a public data sculpture highlighting the role that immigrants have played in the founding, development and continued vibrancy of New York City.
Designed by The Office for Creative Research, We Were Strangers Once Too, is a public data sculpture highlighting the role that immigrants have played in the founding, development and continued vibrancy of New York City.
Data from the 2015 American Census Survey takes visual, sculptural form in 33 metal poles, inscribed and hued to represent the national origins and shifting populations of foreign-born NYC residents. As visitors travel around the sculpture to a designated observation point, their perspective shifts until the individual color blocks of red and pink resolve into an iconic heart.
Conceived as both a striking visual object and as a point of dialogue and conversation, We Were Strangers Once Too champions the value of diversity in the city, and specifically the city’s immigrant populations, new and old, at a time when they are increasingly under siege.
In the last two weeks, New Yorkers have taken to the streets to defend our city’s values of diversity and inclusion. In this turbulent political climate, public spaces like Times Square are critical to our democracy: as places where people can safely speak their minds and agitate in defense of their families and neighbors.
The Urban Design Forum is the proud curatorial partner for the 2017 Times Square Valentine Heart Design competition, led by Times Square Arts. Designed by The Office for Creative Research, We Were Strangers Too, is a public data sculpture highlighting the role that immigrants have played in the founding, development and continued vibrancy of New York City.
Posted — January 10, 2017
Open (Your) Heart is about the greatest love of all – the love of self and what follows – the ability to love others, particularly the most vulnerable amongst us.
Posted — January 10, 2017
Heart to Heart is a temporary public structure that symbolizes how New Yorkers depend on each other, especially at a moment where opening our hearts is more important than ever. It becomes not just a temporary sculpture but also a meaningful action that advocates for underfunded and vulnerable community organizations, affirming them as more permanent public fixtures.
Posted — January 10, 2017
Blind Love is a participatory art project inviting New Yorkers to write love letters to those people who remain in our nation’s blind spots during the current era of mass incarceration.
Posted — January 10, 2017
Heartfelt is a participatory public art project which prompts two or more participants to put away their phones and hold hands to light up Times Square, the Heart of NYC.
Posted — January 10, 2017
This installation for Times Square Valentine rethinks the Sacro Bosco for the 21st century: a labyrinthine experience of unexpected encounters with others and with oneself.
Posted — January 10, 2017
In the name of love and immigrants and freedom of movement and right to assembly, this proposal aims to honor both Duffy and the contemporary vitality that this tiny piece of open space supports in the heart of Manhattan.
Posted — January 10, 2017
When we leave our “cell-fie,” our self-reflective room, we find each other reflected together under the same canopy; at the center, under a heart shape void, we encounter one another.
Posted — January 10, 2017
