The client was the Municipal Arts Society, concerned about the future of the station, which in 2013 will celebrate its centenary in its current form. This huge structure in the form of a bezar was originally designed for a passenger traffic of 75,000 people a day, but now their number sometimes reaches 1 million and will only grow. In addition, the problem is the station's isolation from infrastructure facilities: it is surrounded by office towers, and in the near future, after the weakening of zoning norms, their number and height may increase.
All participants proposed to network the public spaces around the station, linking it to other key Manhattan sites using pedestrian and bike paths. WXY went farthest, proposing to turn part of the Park Avenue viaduct, which runs next to the railway terminal, into a hanging park with a transparent floor.
In addition, these same architects plan to green the nearby MetLife Tower (1962, architect Walter Gropius) and provide it with a large base with public spaces.
The idea of new high-rise buildings near the train station was also popular: WXY see there a slender tower with greenery on the facade, and SOM - as many as two, with a huge ring-observation deck between them.
The most pragmatic turned out to be Foster, who focused on expanding and reorganizing the spaces inside the station with the expectation of ever increasing passenger traffic.
