tkts2K International Design Competition : Van Alen Institute 2000 : New York

An international competition entry for the design of a new tkts tickets booth in Times Square, New York.

A conceptual analogy is made to "... being on stage", both as an architectural starting point and as a participatory street experience.

tktsTheatre [Site], tkts Time [Sign] and tkts Tickets [Booth], are conceptually presented as the three key elements of the compositional design of the new structure.

tktsTheatre [Site] : The public experience is designed as a processional narrative supporting the concept of "...being on stage". tkts ticket purchasers enter and exit the new structure, emerging tickets in hand onto the symbolic stage of the New York street, ready to be participants or voyeurs.

tktsTime [Sign] For ticket buyers, the tkts® icon has become established as a universal graphic element on the New York City streetscape. It is condensed, abbreviated and abstracted to form language as pattern. In its re-interpreted italicized san serif form the multiple scale letters [tktstktstktstktstkts] form a cyclically illuminated sign ribbon around the perimeter of the tkts Booth. Conceived as the major time keeping element the telescoping tktsGNOMON shadow marker presents the time, day and night, by being both a traditional shadow marker and an illuminated hourly indicator at night. During the day, the tktsGNOMON points to the celestial pole [40" 45'] and casts its shadow across the translucent canopy above the ticket buyers. Radial beams establish the hour markers as well as act as the sign and stage curtain supporting gantry. By night, the tktsGNOMON is sequentially illuminated along its length to indicate the hour until fully illuminated at midnight. A gas laser projects light from its tip infinitely towards the celestial pole.

tktsTickets [Booth] The equatorial plane and the ecliptic plane [23" 26'] establish the planar condition for the two juxtaposed architectural volumes. These prefabricated structures, in turn act as the skeletal and volumetric forms from which the tkts signage gantry, the tktsGNOMON and the stage curtain are generated.