Dror for 790 Seventh Avenue

Can a facade match the ever-changing nature of Times Square?
 

A distinguishing quality of 790 Seventh Avenue is its unique footprint, which encompasses an entire New York City block—7th Avenue, Broadway, 51st Street, and 52nd Street. Located in the heart of Times Square, the site resides in a place that is infamous for its over-saturation of advertisements, commercial endeavors, and people. In a way, Times Square became the busiest place in the world because of an intense concentration of brands, experience, activity, and the communication thereof, all in a single locale. As we began thinking about this project and its singular site, we saw an opportunity to reinterpret the notion of a billboard—amidst a hotbed of billboards—as part of a building facade.

Our vision for 790 Seventh Avenue consists of a building clad in a series of twisting digital fins, where multiple strips produce a single, seamless moving image. The fins are oriented in two directions: one side corresponds to the heavy traffic that comes from Times Square heading uptown; the other related to the heavy traffic heading from Central Park traveling downtown. As the fins run vertically along the building’s exterior, they merge into one another, forming a trio of lines that bring a new dimension to the ever-changing skyline of the city.

Use arrow keys to navigate through projects