Fulton Center

Billed by the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) as a "fully digital and accessible transit and retail hub," the Fulton Center aids in connecting and transferring people between nine subway lines (A, C, J, Z, 2, 3, 4, 5, and R), with connections being made to two more lines (E and 1) as well as PATH trains when the Port Authority's $4 billion station, designed by Santiago Calatrava, is completed. Fulton Center is expected to handle 300,000 riders each day.

From the outside, the Fulton Center is a rectangular glass box with black frames and an aluminum drum protruding above its parapet. This drum is the cap of a large central atrium that is lined on the inside with JCDA's Sky Reflector-Net, which bounces sunlight deep into the space via glass reflectors suspended below the oculus and diamond-shaped perforated panels lining the dome.

The opening of the grand space, about the same size as the Frank Lloyd Wright's spiraling Guggenheim atrium, comes 13 years and 2 months after the events of 11 September 2001, but the retail that will ring the atrium space will have to wait, as none has been leased to date. But with so many people moving through the space, and photographing it, on opening day, the lack of this component was not sensed as much as was the ease with which one can now move between subway lines.