Monte S. Angelo Subway Station
Naples
Future Systems and Anish Kapoor
Completion date: 2008
The Monte S. Angelo Subway Station is a dramatic balance of form and function. Future Systems -- the hip London architecture firm behind the sequined Selfridges store in Birmingham -- was hired to revive the neglected and unpopular subway station, along with its abandoned, unfinished tunnels.
The architects, Jan Kaplicky and Amanda Levete, collaborated with well-known sculptor Anish Kapoor to adapt the curvy and streamlined nature of his artwork into functioning architecture. The team first worked out the forms by stretching and molding Plasticine and only then turned the forms into digital models. The result blurs public sculpture and civic architecture.