Historically, domes have been decorated with artistic representations of the sky and its associated mythology. At the time, the transit hub was supposed to have been topped with a glass dome. In 2004, JCDA won a competition sponsored by the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Arts and Design program to design a large-scale, light-harnessing installation for the future Fulton Center. Patrick Cashin The Sky Reflector-Net is composed of 952 perforated aluminum panels, each hung from a stainless steel cable net and uniquely shaped and positioned. The work of his office, James Carpenter Design Associates (JCDA), frequently makes it difficult to separate art from architecture, engineering, and lighting. The artist has built his career on meticulously detailed installations that enrich the play of light and environmental phenomena in architecture. Carpenter likens the perceptual effect of the net to “folding the sky down into the station.” And for good measure, it conceals the hulking mechanical infrastructure. At the same time, it draws the eye up to a luminous field of blue-gray tones.
Composed of a steel cable net and 952 perforated, folded aluminum panels, it drives light deep into the cavernous space. The combination sculpture–daylighting device was conceived by artist James Carpenter, who then collaborated with Grimshaw and Arup to fine-tune it and integrate it with the architecture and engineering. This is thanks to Sky Reflector-Net, a 79-foot-tall tensile structure suspended inside the conical atrium. For starters, there is a generous skylight, 53 feet in diameter and positioned 120 feet above street level, that allows daylight to reach all the way to the subway platforms underground.īut the space does more than just transmit natural light through an opening it collects a larger view of the sky’s changing conditions. Among the many improvements to the Fulton complex, the most visible is the new “headhouse” building designed by Grimshaw with Arup, who oversaw work on the entire complex.
This site is Fulton Center, where a new transportation and retail hub opened this past November after more than a decade of work, and the new project reflects an altogether different vision of public transportation-a vision inspired, Chang says, by the soaring vault of Grand Central Terminal, which is pierced by oblique rays of sunlight. George Tooker / Whitney Museum of American ArtNew YorkPurchasewith funds from the Juliana Force Purchase Award Architect Vincent Chang, a partner at Grimshaw, one of the design firms involved in the overall project, notes that George Tooker's painting The Subway served as a reference point for the type of space the architects did not want to replicate as they developed the new transportation hub.