THE PULSING HEART
Of Times Square
Times Square has found a Valentine's Day counterpart to Rockefeller Center's Christmas tree: a 10-foot-tall pulsing metallic heart, likely to serve as a photogenic backdrop for couples posing at the crossroads of the world.
The heart, installed over the weekend and scheduled to be up for about two weeks, is just south of the spiffy new TKTS booth in Duffy Square.
Done by a wholly New York team -- unlike two other public art projects, ''The Gates'' in Central Park and the ''New York City Waterfalls''-- the heart unites artistic, industrial and commercial elements of the city: Lower East Side architects, Long Island City auto body shop welders, Brooklyn manufacturers and one of the most highly trafficked, advertisement-laden arenas in the world.
The design began as a Christmas tree last holiday season. As part of an expansion of its public art mission, the Times Square Alliance reached out to three architecture and artist teams for innovative proposals. The original concept, submitted by Gage/Clemenceau Architects, was a cone-shaped structure that would flash the blue and silver of Hanukkah, the red and green of Christmas and the black, green and red of Kwanzaa.
After the project was delayed, one of the designers, Mark Foster Gage, sent an image to the alliance in which two of the Christmas tree forms had been turned upside down, melded together and colored pink and red. How about a Valentine's Day project, he joked.
The alliance employees passed around the design in the office: they were hooked.
The two months since have been a flurry of collaboration: Evans & Paul of Long Island molded the interior surface into panels with heart-shaped indentations.
Serino Hot Rod of Long Island City, Queens, which soups up cars for $15,000 to $30,000, donated labor. Milgo/Bufkin, a family-owned manufacturing shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, donated and cut the delicate exterior metal panels. Du Pont donated pink translucent Corian (yes, the countertop material).
In all, in-kind donations and discounts brought the $100,000 cost down to between $20,000 and $30,000.
The planners encountered a few obstacles in Times Square. Electricity, for example. For all the bright lights and flashing neon, there was only a single outlet at the TKTS booth to power the heart. Hence the use of energy-efficient LEDs.
After all that work, will the heart definitely be removed after just a few weeks?
That's the plan, Mr. Gage said. But he added: ''Who knows? The Eiffel Tower was supposed to be temporary.''
JENNIFER 8. LEE SLIDESHOW: On the blog, see a slideshow of the heart project, from construction to installation.
PHOTOS: Antonio Ingenito, top, of Serino Hot Rod, works on a 10-foot heart that will be displayed in Times Square.(PHOTOS BY MARILYNN K. YEE/ THE NEW YORK TIMES)
