Heart-Beating Urban Drum Coming to Times Square

John Hill

16. December 2014

Rendering: Stereotank, courtesy of Times Square Arts

Stereotank has been selected as the winner of the 2015 Times Square Valentine Heart Design, an invited competition organized by the Times Square Arts and the Architectural League of New York.

HeartBeat is the winning proposal by Venezuela-born, New York-based architects Sara Valente and Marcelo Ertorteguy of Stereotank, the firm they started "to experiment with the common grounds between architecture, art and sound." Sound is an integral part of HeartBeat, as it "consists of a massive heart glowing to the rhythm of a strong, deep and low frequency heartbeat sound which changes its rate as visitors approach, move around and engage with it by playing various percussion instruments and joining the base rhythm of the heartbeat," per a statement from Times Square Art. HeartBeat will be the seventh annual installation celebrating Valentine's Day in Times Square.

Rendering: Stereotank, courtesy of Times Square Arts

HeartBeat will be on display at Father Duffy Square (between 46th and 47th Streets in Times Square) from 9 February to 8 March 2015, coinciding with, appropriately, Valentine's Day. Other invited finalists in the seventh annual competition: Alibi Studio; The Bittertang Farm & James Lowder; Chat Travieso; Modu Architecture; SLO Architecture; and Taylor Miller.

Previous winners of the Times Square Valentine Heart Design competition:

2014: Young Projects
2013: Situ Studio
2012: BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group
2011: Freecell
2010: Moorhead & Moorhead
2009: Gage / Clemenceau Architects