Sarah Sze: Designing a Subway Station | Art21 "Exclusive"

[Sarah Sze: Designing A Subway Station]

A blueprint is traditionally
a two-dimensional drawing

that helps you understand
three-dimensional space.

As a place of transit,

I wanted all of the different entranceways
of the subway station

to mirror how we move through space.

It's this kind of speed of movement--

these transitions into different
kinds of environments

that we take for granted and we do repetitively.

It's really an incredible thing to see,

an actual new subway station come from

a core driller to a realization.

The Second Avenue subway extension

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

This is a major, major construction project.

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

that is so beyond you,

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

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

from the application process to now.

I've done a lot of public artwork,

and MTA Arts and Design was incredible.

They completely get behind the artist.

It's a huge number of tiles,

and it's a very technical installation.

There are so many decisions,

so I did feel a kind of pressure.

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

and my great grandchildren might see that.

[LAUGHS] You know?

In a kind of very, very permanent way.

[Sarah Sze, "Blueprint for a Landscape"]

--[POLICE OFFICER] It's beautiful!

--[SZE] Thank you so much.

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

--[SZE] Sure, of course!

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

--Do a good job, rookie!

[ALL LAUGH]

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

You know, you have local,

you have global audiences going through them.

I think it's an important idea that

the city values that experience also
as an aesthetic experience.

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

This was the first one I did.

This has this kind of one-point perspective

speeding down through space.

I was thinking a lot about

the Russian Constructivists,

the Italian Futurists.

You know, they were obsessed
with this idea of

the acceleration of the experience of time,

mostly through transit.

For this entryway,

you're literally diving down through

the surface of the pavement and the city--

but to play around with it more in terms of

diving down through a surface,

almost like when you dive into water.

I photographed the environment,

and this is sort of the beginning of
Hudson Yards.

I walk along that route to go to my studio.

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

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

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

was how you would see the stations
from this level.

If you came out here and this was your entrance,

they are different enough,
so you can really tell

that that's the southwest corner

and this is the northeast corner.

So that is a wayfinding thing.

I wanted vertical landscapes

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

and then you would pass into a moment of emptiness,

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

So this is the mezzanine.

And it was really interesting because actually

the mezzanine was added on over the years.

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

And I had actually done the three stairs first.

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

really explain the idea of how things move
in space.

Just do something very simple.

One gesture--

a piece of paper--

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

Like the gust of wind when a train comes.

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

When I applied to colleges,

I applied with an essay that was
about the fact

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

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

[LAUGHS]