This year, the 46-story, multiuse building TSX Broadway will open in New York’s Times Square fusing retail, hospitality (including the launch of Hilton’s Tempo brand), and an entertainment initiative founded by Spotify alum Nick Holmsten and Fortress Investment Group that also spans the virtual world.
Michelle Schrank, director at ICRAVE, the New York-based firm behind both the interiors of the 550,000-square-foot tower and the TSX Entertainment digital twin in the TSX Metaverse, likens the venue to a Disneyland for artists, a modern-day iteration of MTV’s Total Request Live for musicians to debut videos and interact with fans.
“The idea is that I can buy a ticket to see someone performing at the supper club that evening. Someone in Tokyo can also have a virtual and augmented version of that concert,” Schrank explains. “I’m interested in the emotional work of an experience map for a customer. Are there moments where we’re solving problems? Are we introducing joy and spontaneity?”
Among its many offerings, TSX Broadway includes an onsite recording studio on the 8th floor, shown in a rendering
The advent of AI is transforming the notion of immersive design. Olivia Reid, senior creative strategist for the AI Experience Studio at the New York design and innovation consultancy Journey, believes that it’s fueled by personalization. “The way it can connect to a person can be a lot more useful and a lot less one-size-fits-all,” says Reid. Journey, which has helmed projects like Walmart Land on the gaming platform Roblox, is also exploring AI as a toolkit that shapes physical spaces. “You’re seeing what people want, and you’re absorbing that information to provide a better customer experience,” adds Reid. “It’s a symbiotic relationship between how people engage and what they hope to see.”
Constance Nuttall, project director at Squint/Opera, a digital media and spatial design practice with offices in London, Dubai, and Brooklyn, New York, counts such clients as the Empire State Building and London shopping and leisure destination Battersea Power Station, and is compelled by the link between AI and visitor touchpoints. With screens everywhere, Nuttall says she is looking at where “you can go deeper into the content” and still feel a part of the environment. “It’s important for brands to figure out what their digital ecosystem is,” she adds.
Overall, New York innovation strategist John Duffield of the agency Signal Two, sees AI as “an amplifier of human abilities.” For design, this translates to programs like Microsoft Copilot, which can help draft emails and presentation slides, or conjuring photorealistic renderings on programs like InteriorFlow, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney “to fast track your way to an inspiration mood board and staging options,” he says. “AI in design apps can quickly produce layout options that automatically conform to a specific set of parameters and constraints. Imagine being able to rapidly evaluate creative options from a preliminary preview versus starting from scratch. Now, designers can be served options faster, reducing the manual work of ‘making’ and shifting efforts more on strategic curating and refining of experiences.”
With AI as a visual partner, he adds, “designers can apply their skills to the most impactful creative challenges.”
Inspired by the historical photography of Lewis Hine, another Observatory exhibit immerses visitors in the middle of the building’s construction action
A rendering of a sophisticated bar space at TSX Broadway
This article originally appeared in HD’s December 2023 issue.
