WEBVTT

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[Sarah Sze: Designing A Subway Station]

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A blueprint is traditionally
a two-dimensional drawing

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that helps you understand
three-dimensional space.

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As a place of transit,

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I wanted all of the different entranceways
of the subway station

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to mirror how we move through space.

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It's this kind of speed of movement--

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these transitions into different
kinds of environments

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that we take for granted and we do repetitively.

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It's really an incredible thing to see,

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an actual new subway station come from

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a core driller to a realization.

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The Second Avenue subway extension

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is a project that was first thought about
in, I think, 1920.

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This is a major, major construction project.

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So, it's nice to be part of a project

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that is so beyond you,

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and you're really part of a much larger system.

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I've been working on it for almost ten years,

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from the application process to now.

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I've done a lot of public artwork,

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and MTA Arts and Design was incredible.

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They completely get behind the artist.

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It's a huge number of tiles,

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and it's a very technical installation.

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There are so many decisions,

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so I did feel a kind of pressure.

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I'm going to have to see that every day,

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and my great grandchildren might see that.

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[LAUGHS] You know?

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In a kind of very, very permanent way.

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[Sarah Sze, "Blueprint for a Landscape"]

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--[POLICE OFFICER] It's beautiful!

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--[SZE] Thank you so much.

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--[POLICE OFFICER] You mind if I just have
one picture with you?

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--[SZE] Sure, of course!

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--[POLICE OFFICER] Come on, do a good job.

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--Do a good job, rookie!

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[ALL LAUGH]

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[SZE] Subway stations are one of the
most democratic places that you can find.

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You know, you have local,

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you have global audiences going through them.

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I think it's an important idea that

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the city values that experience also
as an aesthetic experience.

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I was thinking about gravity differently
in each entryway or exit.

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This was the first one I did.

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This has this kind of one-point perspective

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speeding down through space.

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I was thinking a lot about

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the Russian Constructivists,

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the Italian Futurists.

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You know, they were obsessed
with this idea of

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the acceleration of the experience of time,

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mostly through transit.

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For this entryway,

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you're literally diving down through

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the surface of the pavement and the city--

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but to play around with it more in terms of

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diving down through a surface,

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almost like when you dive into water.

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I photographed the environment,

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and this is sort of the beginning of
Hudson Yards.

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I walk along that route to go to my studio.

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It was important to me to juxtapose it with
a hand mark

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so that it didn't feel computer-generated
throughout.

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One of things that was hard to understand
until it was made

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was how you would see the stations
from this level.

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If you came out here and this was your entrance,

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they are different enough,
so you can really tell

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that that's the southwest corner

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and this is the northeast corner.

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So that is a wayfinding thing.

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I wanted vertical landscapes

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that you would kind of anticipate
having an opportunity to see the detail,

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and then you would pass into a moment of emptiness,

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and then you'd come back to this density again.

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So this is the mezzanine.

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And it was really interesting because actually

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the mezzanine was added on over the years.

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They said, "Okay, we have this opportunity
to do the mezzanine."

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And I had actually done the three stairs first.

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I thought, here's where I can, sort of,

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really explain the idea of how things move
in space.

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Just do something very simple.

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One gesture--

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a piece of paper--

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and then have it mirror, sort of,
the way air moves.

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Like the gust of wind when a train comes.

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As we move, we're pushing the air around us.

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When I applied to colleges,

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I applied with an essay that was
about the fact

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that I would always draw people's portraits
on the subway.

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So now it's kind of great to have drawings
on the subway.

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[LAUGHS]