Friday Eye Candy: Shedding Daylight on New York Subway Stations

"On the official map of the New York subway, each station is a tiny dot," writes Tanvi Misra. "But that representation obscures the labyrinth-like complexity of these structures, which can span two or more blocks and multiple levels."

Architect Candy Chan noticed the problem of navigation in these subterranean hubs and launched a project to create a visual study of New York City's most complex subway stations.

The resulting Project NYC Subway is a transit and map wonk's dream, so it's exciting news that Chan has recently updated the project with "a new series of sketches of stations and their surroundings along Broadway." The new series of images place the orientation of the subway stations in context of the city above. "Her new images contain tiny people and tall buildings for scale, as well as trees, sculptures, parks and squares—all of which 'actually matter in the urban setting,' [Chan] says."

The article includes four of the new sketches, of stations at 42nd Street – Times Square; 34th Street – Herald Square; 23rd Street – Madison Square; and 14th Street – Union Square.