Mnemonics at Battery Park City

Artist: Kristin Jones; Andrew Ginzel

Architects: Cooper, Robertson & Partners; Gruzen Samton • IBI Group Architects

Collection: The Battery Conservancy

Commissioner: City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program; Battery Park City Authority; Board of Education

Date: Installed, 1992

The new Stuyvesant building was constructed with the intention of embedding time in its structure. Mnemonics was designed to endow the school with a sense of its own history as well as a sense of the accumulated knowledge and multi-cultural history of the world. Over 400 glass cubes are scattered randomly throughout the entire building, from the main lobby to the tenth floor. Some of the cubes contain artifacts and relics that are evidence of geographical, natural, cultural, and social worlds, including water from the Nile River and a piece of the Great Wall of China. There are also individual glass cubes for each graduating class from 1904-2080, thus weaving Stuyvesant's past, present, and future. The 2003 graduating class chose a chunk of rubble from the first bombing of the World Trade Center, which was located near the school. Mnemonics won the Art Commission Award for Excellence in Design in 1989.