"Window to the Heart," is a public art installation designed by New York and Tucson, Ariz.–based design studio Aranda\Lasch and artist Marcelo Coelho, of Melrose, Mass.–based Marcelo Coelho Studio. The love-themed installation won the 10th iteration of the Times Square Valentine Heart Design Competition—an annual design contest organized by the Times Square Alliance—in November 2017 and will be erected in New York's Father Duffy Square for the entire month of February.
Measuring 12 feet in diameter, "Window to the Heart" is set to be the world's largest Fresnel lens, a type of compact, lightweight lens that is widely used in lighthouse lamps. Designed and 3D-printed by Somerville, Mass.–based Formlabs, the sculpture's lens is fabricated using 3D-printed concentric, ring-shaped sections made of clear resin that are thinned down as they draw near the center. According to a release by the Alliance, the lens will "distort and capture the image of Times Square, optically bending light—and attention—to the heart-shaped window at its center."
“Times Square is a symbol for how we experience our world," said the designers in the same release. "It is a physical manifestation of our culture, one dispersed and absorbed through cameras and screens. And in this culture, to fall in love you must first fall through a lens.”
Previous winning installations include: "We Were Strangers Once Too" by The Office for Creative Research in 2017; "Heart of Hearts" by Collective-LOK in 2016; and the "HeartBeat" by Stereotank in 2015.
"Window to the Heart" opens Feb. 1 and will remain on view through Feb. 28.
