Red Cube.

Isamu Noguchi, Red Cube

The sculpture is located in front of 140 Broadway, between Liberty and Cedar Streets.

The bright red painted steel of Isamu Noguchi’s Red Cube stands out in strong contrast to the blacks, browns, and whites of the buildings and sidewalks around the sculpture. Located to one side of a small plaza in front of the HSBC (previously the Marine Midland Bank) building on Broadway, Red Cube is surrounded on three sides by skyscrapers, the height of which draw a viewer’s eye upwards. The sculpture itself adds to this upward pull, as it balances on one corner, the opposite corner reaching towards the sky. Despite its title, the sculpture is not actually a cube, but instead seems as though it has been stretched along its vertical axis.

Aside from it’s striking color, Red Cube also stands out from the surrounding architecture in that all of its lines are diagonals, whereas the buildings are made up of horizontal and vertical lines. Additionally, the sculpture is balanced somewhat precariously on one corner, while the buildings, by contrast, and solidly placed.

Through the center of the cube there is a cylindrical hole, revealing an inner surface of gray with evenly-spaced lines moving from one opening of the hole to the other. Looking through this hole, the viewer’s gaze is directed towards the building behind, tying the sculpture and the architecture together.

Although Noguchi began his sculpting career creating individual pieces, he spent a number of years in the 1940s and 50s working primarily on designing spaces, such as gardens and plazas, and incorporating sculptural elements that worked together to create a whole. These experiences affected his subsequent work on individual sculpture pieces. In discussing his conception of public sculpture, Noguchi expresses the importance of the relationship between sculpture and architecture: “The spaces around buildings should be treated in such a way as to dramatize and make the space meaningful…”