This is one of two entries from the Municipal Art Society's 1984 Times Tower competition that highlight collage’s compatibility with the accelerated time frame of architectural competitions. Organized to oppose a commercial redevelopment plan for New York City's Times Square, the entries offer cut–and–paste ripostes to a proposal by architects John Burgee and Philip Johnson to build four office towers to enclose the square. Abraham’s proposal extended the Tower vertically with a stack of cineplexes. Lupo and Rowen's counter proposal, in a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s complex and enigmatic 1915–23 sculpture The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), stripped the existing tower to its structural frame and mounted two enormous media screens on top. Both proposals engage Times Square as a cinematic center of media and the Tower as a beacon of effects.
Gallery label from Cut ’n’ Paste: From Architectural Assemblage to Collage City, July 10–December 1, 2013.
