TIMES SQUARE

Or

Reinventing

SCYLLA and CHARYBDIS

Times Square is Life and Death, and Life and Death are Existence. Existence is the gathering between opposite forces. Times Square is a mythical place where the “masculine principle” and the “feminine principle” meet together. For these two fundamental forces I imagine two towers: THE RED TOWER, symbolizing the masculine principle (king, fire, sulfur, sun) and THE WHITE TOWER, symbolizing the feminine principle (queen, water, mercury, moon). The RED TOWER replacing the actual Times Tower, at 42nd Street, and the WHITE TOWER replacing the Coca-Cola Building, at 48th street. In front of each tower there is a huge “urban chair,” whose back is a sliced sphere (white in the case of the Red King and red, in the case of the White Queen). The two towers I propose face each other at equal distance from the “center,” the intersection between Broadway and Seventh Avenue at 45th street, there where “the crossroads of the world” is (as this intersection is called). Together with this center these two fundamental forces build the frame of the human drama. Times Square is a quintessential image of this drama. There is an exacerbated tension there. Everything is there, except something to evoke the CAUSE, the mythical CAUSE, of this incredible tension. This is why I thought, for a while, of SCYLLA and CHARYBDIS. The spirit needs them, in order to understand the tension between these two mythical mountains. The Greeks invented them with a reason. This is why we should remember them with the necessary humbleness.