New York City will celebrate the opening of its seventh Valentine’s Day installation in Times Square. The Times Square Alliance along with the Architectural League of New York have announced the winner of the 2015 Times Square Valentine Heart Design. The interactive installation is scheduled to open for an entire month on February 9, and remain on view through March 8th.

As part of the annual Times Square Valentine Heart Design contest, the Brooklyn-based, Venezuelan-born firm Stereotank just came out as the winner with their entry: "HEARTBEAT," will be located at Father Duffy Square, between 46th and 47th Streets. This is in partnership with The Architectural League of New York. Support provided by Arup.

"HEARTBEAT is a heart-beating urban drum. This engagement sculpture 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. The audience is invited to come together and creatively play, listen, dance and feel the vibrations of the heart while enjoying the warm pulsating light. In the emblematic, active, flickering atmosphere of Times Square, HeartBeat orchestrates multiple rhythms into a unique urban concert." Says Stereotank.

“Heartbeat is equipped with various percussion instruments. Each drum has unique sounds and resonant characteristics. Membranes of different sizes and materials such as synthetic snare skin, synthetic snare skin with coil, animal hide, and hard plastic are used to create a variety of drum timbres.”

Previous winners of the Times Square Valentine Heart Design include: Young Projects (2014); Situ Studio (2013); BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) (2012); Freecell (2011); Moorhead & Moorhead (2010); and Gage / Clemenceau Architects (2009).

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Stereotank, Marcelo Ertorteguy and Sara Valente graduated from the School of Architecture and Urbanism of The Universidad Central de Venezuela in 2005. After conducting a design studio about the common territories between architecture and music at the same school, they moved to New York to pursue a Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University graduating with honors in 2007.

They currently live and work in NYC as architects and simultaneously develop a research about the relationships between space and sound through the design and construction of inhabitable sound instruments and installations.
Sara Valente and Marcelo Ertorteguy. Photograph © Stereotank.

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