NEW YORK (NEWS10) – Times Square Arts launched its newest project on Wednesday: Love Letters. The Love Letters will be on display at Father Duffy Square, between 46th and 47th Streets, and will remain from February 10 to March 10.

Soft-Firm’s Love Letters is the winner of the 13th annual Love in Times Square Design Competition, which is curated by Reddymade. Primarily composed of repurposed and donated plywood from building façades across New York City, Love Letters is a large-scale sculptural installation that invites a diversity of public participation themed around love and notions of interdependence, resilience, and inclusivity.

The display will “wind across Duffy Square creating four integrated spaces that unite as one folding surface, which from above presents two interlocking hearts.” The structure is made up of four parts: the “Soap Box,” the “Love Seat,” the “Chapel,” and the “Wishing Well.”

The “Soap Box” offers outward facing seating that doubles as a stage for public speaking and performance. The “Love Seat” provides a bench and the “Chapel” supports two tiers of seating for a small group to meet and view Times Square. The enclosure then rises to eye level in the “Wishing Well” as a space for meditation and reflection. 

Love Letters invites the public to participate in the installation by leaving their own love letters within the sculpture. Visitors are invited to tie a wish, a memento, or an artifact onto the netted underlay, such as letters of protest, a letter to a lost loved one, or a message of appreciation to essential workers. The public can layer on their own meanings to the plywood.

Feeling amorous, but can’t make it to Times Square? Submit your love letter online. Your virtual message will be transcribed by public art ambassadors and tied onto the sculpture while the work is on display.

For the structure, plywood panels are alternated with mirrored windows and safety net is woven in the plywood.