The Psychology of the New Times Square

When David Owen wrote about the work of the Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta, Craig Dykers, one of the principal partners of the firm, discussed the organization’s approach to design by describing the scene outside his New York office, which overlooks the Wall Street bull:

Dykers told me that he has observed the crowds around the bull for years, and that the tourists can be divided roughly equally into those who pose at its head and those who pose at its rear end. (The bull’s nose, horns, and testicles have been rubbed, for luck, to more or less identical degrees of shininess.) Dykers said the statue is a useful reminder that humans are diverse, and have their own ideas about design. “A lot of our work as architects takes into account that just as many people are interested in the backside of the bull,” he said.

Snøhetta is the firm behind the redesign of Times Square, which started in 2012 and is scheduled to be completed soon. In this video, which first appeared on the Amazon Originals series “The New Yorker Presents,” Dykers talks about the particular challenges presented by one of the most dramatic, crowded, and oft-reviled stretches of New York. The difficulty begins with the shape of Times Square—it’s narrow and lies in a slight dip in the land, increasing the feeling of crowdedness even when the space isn’t that crowded. Intuition might tell you that, to alleviate that sensation, a designer should open up the area as much as possible. Dykers explains that Snøhaetta’s approach is the opposite; the firm’s designers have found that the creation of well-placed obstacles is the key to unlocking the potential of a space, to giving people—whether they be front-of-the bull or back-of-the-bull people—the freedom to follow their instincts and shape the space for themselves. It is not the removal of obstacles but, rather, the necessity of having to navigate around them that “creates a natural feeling of camaraderie,” Dykers says, “and creates a sense of comfort.”

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