"Sky Reflector-Net" is an integrated artwork by James Carpenter Design Associates, Grimshaw Architects and ARUP, designed specifically for the Fulton Transit Center. The monumental sculpture embraces light and air, creating a distinctive focal point within Lower Manhattan’s urban fabric. 

Suspended within the atrium's conical form, "Sky Reflector-Net" is composed of 112 tensioned cables, 224 high-strength rods and nearly 10,000 stainless steel components. Attached to the soaring cable-net are 952 perforated optical aluminum panels that distribute year-round daylight and bring the sky down into the lower levels of the Center. The artwork combines beauty and function, reduces energy consumption by 30 percent and powerfully connects the 300,000 daily transit users with a sense of daylight that will be constantly changing. 

According to Carpenter, “The artwork merges the human and social activity of the Fulton Center with a transcendent experience of New York City’s extraordinary skies, subtly connecting daily transit users’ passage through the city’s subterranean network with the daily and seasonal rhythms of the sky.” 

Visible from the corner of Broadway and Fulton Street, "Sky Reflector-Net" acts as a primary defining element for the Fulton Center – the powerful influence of natural light on our concept of the time of day, on the changes in the seasons, and the passing of years. It also is a key element in the creation of a renewed sense of place for Lower Manhattan. 

James Carpenter has worked at the intersection of art, engineering and the built environment for 50 years, advancing a distinctive vision based on the use of natural light and glass as the foundational elements of the built environment. Carpenter founded the cross-disciplinary design firm James Carpenter Design Associates in 1979 to support the application of these aesthetic principles to large-scale building projects. Carpenter has been recognized with numerous national and international awards, including an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He holds a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and was a Loeb Fellow of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.