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(NEW YORK, NY — November 15, 2024) — Times Square Arts is pleased to announce Pernilla Ohrstedt Studio as the winner of the 17th annual Love & Design Competition. For the month of February 2025 and with the support of curatorial partner The World Around and collaborator Billion Oyster Project, Pernilla Ohrstedt Studio will debut Love Ever After, a public art installation in the heart of Times Square that aims to bring love, sustainability, and environmental awareness to New York City for the season of love.
Love Ever After is designed to create beauty through simplicity, where reuse, regrowth, and love for the environment and community is an integral part of its story. The project assembles metal mesh used for oyster reef cages to create a three-dimensional grid revealing geometries of a heart.
The three-dimensional heart flickers and shifts color and shape as the angle of its perception changes, creating a tactile and human-scale experience in contrast to the high-tech screens for which Times Square is famous. Accompanying the installation will be one additional oyster cage filled with shells, to demonstrate Love Ever After’s future use and increase awareness of Billion Oyster Project’s mission of restoring one billion oysters back to New York Harbor by 2035 through public education initiatives. New York Harbor was once one of the world’s largest and most abundant harbors. Oysters and oyster reefs foster biodiversity, filter water, and create a natural storm barrier. The installation reflects The World Around’s curatorial vision, calling for a project “that addresses through its own creation the lifecycle of materials that go into the making of the...spaces…around us” created with materials that will serve to create a more equitable future.
“From the heart of New York City to its shoreline. Our sculpture will begin by broadcasting love for people, community and environment. Highlighting one of the city’s most exciting ecological initiatives - Billion Oyster Project - to the global audience of Times Square. After the sculpture will disperse, the pieces of the heart become oyster research cages placed all around New York City’s shoreline. Monitored by hundreds of volunteering New Yorkers creating oyster reefs that clean our waters” said Pernilla Ohrstedt.
Before New York City became the "Big Apple, it was the Big Oyster because of their abundance in New York Harbor and widespread consumption. Oysters were so plentiful in NYC that their shells became a key waste product, used in road construction, mortar, and even burned to produce lime. Today, most oyster shells in New York City end up in landfills. Billion Oyster Project is changing this by collecting oyster shells from over 80 restaurants, cleaning, storing, and recycling them at their two Shell Recycling centers—diverting 2.4M pounds of oyster shells from landfills since 2014. The recycled shells are used to create and rebuild oyster reefs to clean New York City’s water and protect its waterfronts.
"Love Ever After” beautifully captures the intersection of art and environmental restoration, embodying how these two worlds can inspire people to reconnect with nature. Knowing that this installation will eventually leave Times Square to continue its journey in our oyster restoration efforts reminds me that our work is cyclical, a living process that gives back to New York Harbor. I hope that by experiencing this piece in the city’s heart, visitors will feel a renewed love and responsibility for New York Harbor and activate them to join us in creating a more sustainable future,” said Agata Poniatowski, Public Outreach Manager, Billion Oyster Project.
“What a beautiful embodiment of love - Pernilla Ohrstedt Studio has designed an interconnected call to care for one another as well as the world in which we live, in a time when keeping our hearts open is as urgent as ever, and essential for envisioning more sustainable futures,” said Times Square Arts Director Jean Cooney.
The 2025 Love & Design Competition marks a significant milestone as the first-ever commission for The World Around, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the best ideas in architecture and design accessible to all with a focus on social and ecological justice. The World Around sought installations that not only examined the lifecycle of materials used in architecture but also required each component to be recyclable, reusable, and to serve as a space for gathering and celebration. This approach emphasized how creative design can foster principles that transcend immediate experiences and contribute to a more equitable and sustainable future.
“This is The World Around's first architectural commission and we couldn't be more excited to participate in a project that embodies our values - demonstrating the role that designers are playing and can continue to play in securing a safe and equitable future for our planet. In an era where the challenges of our time demand urgent action, Pernilla Ohrstedt's design celebrates the impactful work of the designers and leaders behind the Billion Oyster Project. We are very proud to partner with Times Square Arts and with Pernilla Ohrstedt on this meaningful project for all of our organizations," said Founder and Executive Director of The World Around, Beatrice Galilee.
For seventeen years, Times Square Arts has hosted this design competition to celebrate the work of innovative, emerging architecture and design firms, and speak to themes of love during the month of February in Times Square. The finalists for this year’s competition included: Atelier Masomi, Jerome Haferd, Space Caviar, and Studio Galeon.
2025 LOVE & DESIGN FINALISTS
2025 LOVE & DESIGN COMPETITION JURORS:
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ABOUT PERNILLA OHRSTEDT
Pernilla Ohrstedt is a Swedish architect and designer, and the founder of Pernilla Ohrstedt Studio based in New York City. She has an international reputation for realizing innovative projects that span the disciplines of architecture, design, art, and fashion. Key to her practice is creating striking projects with minimal means - through reuse and unexpected material choices and by bringing together visionary teams of forward-thinking clients, community initiatives and exceptional designers and fabricators.Her projects range from buildings, art installations, museum exhibitions, interiors, set design and furniture.
ABOUT THE WORLD AROUND
The World Around is a nonprofit dedicated to making the most innovative ideas in architecture and design accessible to all. Through our critically acclaimed public programs and events, we present ground-breaking contemporary architecture and design, focusing on interdisciplinary, forward-thinking solutions and climate justice. Our archive, featuring commissioned films, talks, and presentations from the world’s leading thinkers and creators, is freely available here and on our YouTube channel. With a strong commitment to addressing the most pressing issue of our time—climate change—The World Around proudly hosts the Young Climate Prize, an award and mentorship program that supports talented designers under 25. Learn more at theworldaround.com and @theworldaround on Instagram.
ABOUT BILLION OYSTER PROJECT
Billion Oyster Project is a nonprofit organization on a mission to restore oyster reefs to the New York Harbor through public education initiatives. They envision a future in which the New York Harbor is a world-class public blue space — well used and well cared for by New Yorkers with an effort to engage 1 million people to restore 1 billion oysters by 2035. Learn more: https://www.billionoysterproject.org/
ABOUT TIMES SQUARE ARTS
Times Square Arts, the public art program of the Times Square Alliance, collaborates with contemporary artists and cultural institutions to experiment and engage with one of the world's most iconic urban places. Through the Square's electronic billboards, public plazas, vacant areas and popular venues, and the Alliance's own online landscape, Times Square Arts invites leading contemporary creators, such as Charles Gaines, Joan Jonas, Jeffrey Gibson, Pamela Council, Mel Chin and Kehinde Wiley, to help the public see Times Square in new ways. Times Square has always been a cultural district and place of risk, innovation and creativity, and the arts program ensures these qualities remain central to the district's unique identity.
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