The inspiration for this station's design was local sites - the historic Coney Island boardwalk, Cyclone roller coaster, the aquarium next to the station, and area beaches. The station is on the approximate site of a former roller coaster ride. The architect, Jim McConnell of Daniel Frankfurt, wanted to transform the exterior station walls in a unique way. Working with the architects, artist Vito Acconci developed an architectural treatment for the station façade that is full of life. As in successful collaborations, there is no clear delineation between the architecture and the art. 

Before the station rehabilitation, the windscreens blocked ocean views. Today, the new windscreens open up the platform view of the Atlantic Ocean. In Acconci’s words, "The normally horizontal and vertical steel windscreen tubes and panels have been transformed into a more sinuous form that evokes the notion of a wave, or that of motion as in the Cyclone or the subway itself." The result is a striking and unique subway station that fits into its special surroundings.

Vito Acconci (1940-2017) was an influential American performance, video and installation artist, whose practice expanded from poetry to sculpture, architecture, and landscape design. His early performance works were characterized by existential dread, provocation, voyeurism, and boundary crossing behavior. In the late 1960s, Acconci began creating situation focused performances, most notably in the streets of New York City. These formative works document Acconci’s early explorations into boundaries and physical movement. By the 1970s, Acconci began diving further into the interactions between bodies and space, focusing on architecture and furniture design. The scale of Acconci’s work continued to expand until he was making monumental public art. From the 1980s onwards he worked on and off with Acconci Studio on large scale commissions and public projects. Named after Vito Acconci, the Brooklyn based, Acconci Studio, is a collaborative group of architects and designers.