A new exhibition at NYC's Skyscraper Museum takes a wild look at some fairly ludicrous proposals for a Times Square redesign. Reading "more like New Yorker covers than 4.2-million-square-foot plans to clean up a tawdry city center," the hopeful renderings were a response to a fantastically boring design plan by famed modernist Philip Johnson and John Burgee, which New Yorkers deemed too "dull, bulky, and sterile." Instead, the alternatives include a tower in the shape of a person reading a newspaper (probably not on a toilet,) a boulevard-sized bowling alley (dangerous!) and an oh-so-clever apple statue (get it?) by husband and wife team Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. Take a look at more entries from the "Times Square, 1984: The Postmodern Moment" exhibit, below:
· Unrealized Times Square Plans Include a Very Subtle 'Big Apple' [Curbed National]
· Skyscraper Museum's Times Square Exhibition [official site]
· 9 Spectacular Visions for Times Square That Were Never Built [Architizer]
· All Robert Venturi posts [Curbed National]
· All Denise Scott Brown posts [Curbed National]