X
"Justice is what love looks like in public. Tenderness is what love feels like in private."
—Dr. Cornel West
Reddymade is an architecture and design firm that focuses on the economic, social, environmental, and cultural impacts of their work. Led by founder and architect Suchi Reddy, the firm’s approach traverses formalism and experimentation.
X (2019), Reddymade’s winning design for the eleventh annual Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition, explores how love emerges within communities where difference meets equality. An “X” evokes many expressions of interpersonal and civic love, including the written symbol for a kiss, and even the mark of a vote. People from all backgrounds cross paths in Times Square, and Reddymade’s design offers them a meeting point for further exchange and connection.
“In times of rising xenophobia and division in communities around the world, Dr. West’s sentiment resonated with me as being both timely and poetic, and I was inspired to make an installation that was not just beautiful, or interesting, but meaningful. Exploring the idea of communities as spaces of intersection led me to the tectonic expression of the “X,” which fits the context of Times Square, one of the most thriving intersections of people, place, and culture, and its XXX history. X is for love.”
—Suchi Reddy, Founding Principal, Reddymade
“We are excited to invite the public to experience Reddymade’s monumental ‘X’ in the heart of Times Square. The installation’s imaginative design encourages everyone to come together in NYC’s most bustling public space and pause for a moment of love and unity.”
—Benjamin Prosky, Executive Director, AIA New York and the Center for Architecture
X takes its titular form with two crossed aluminum planes, creating a passageway through or a snug meeting place within the 18-foot-tall structure. Round openings at the centers of the planes combine into heart shapes when viewed from different angles. X’s glowing light grows brighter as people gather underneath its intersection.
The Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition is an annual invitation for architecture and design firms to submit proposals for an iconic public art installation that celebrates and communicates love in the heart of this dynamic city during the month of Love in Times Square.
Times Square Arts collaborated with AIA New York on a call for proposals for the 2019 heart design and an exhibition of the finalist submissions, on view from October 15—November 2, 2018 at The Center for Architecture. Read about the proposals from the seven other 2019 Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition finalists here.
Reddymade, founded in 2002 by architect Suchi Reddy, is a diverse architecture & design firm whose practice takes a human-centric approach to design, one that assesses the economic, social, environmental, and cultural impacts of its work on both people and planet. Working from her home country of India to her home base in New York city, with projects in Miami and Los Angeles, Reddy charts a course for all things Reddymade with a culturally specific, globally curious eye.
Current notable projects and areas of research include a kinetic rainscreen façade for a multi-use building completed in 2016 in Chennai, India; a sensory healing room designed to measure the effects of space and sensory input on patients recovering from comas for the Arts + Minds Lab at the Brain Sciences Institute of Johns Hopkins; and a residential project designed with artist and social activist Ai Weiwei in upstate New York.
Reddymade’s projects have garnered the studio numerous awards, including a 2018 AIA Excelsior award, a 2018 AIA BQDA award, a 2018 NYCxDesign award, and a 2018 Architizer A+ award. Recent press coverage includes articles in national and international publications such as the New York Times, Forbes.com, The Architectural Record, Architects Newspaper, Dwell, AD.com, the Wall Street Journal, Interior Design, New York Magazine and AD India.
Reddymade’s work has been included in publications such as Drawing from Practice: Architects and the Meaning of Freehand by J. Michael Welton, 2015, Routledge Press, and 1000 X Architecture of the Americas, 2008, Braun Publishing.
Founded in 1857, AIA New York is the oldest and largest chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The Chapter’s members include over 5,000 practicing architects, allied professionals, students, and public members interested in architecture and design. AIA New York is dedicated to three goals: design excellence, public outreach, and professional development.
Photos courtesy of Ka-Man Tse for Times Square Arts.