Grant Plotkin: Redesigning the New York City Subway System
Grant Plotkin has put in motion what New York City subway barriers could be. Images c/o meet the edge.
Grant Plotkin, the Founder and CEO of meet the edge, is no stranger to imagining a new future. He studied creative entrepreneurship at Parsons School of Design, a degree that he designed himself because it didn’t exist. Then his career path took him to SoulCycle, Roc Nation, and the Museum of Ice Cream, before he launched meet the edge in 2020.
The name fits. Plotkin’s bootstrapped, five-person company pushes clients, such as Yves Saint Laurent, The Paley Center for Media, and Moment Factory to new creative, immersive, and experiential worlds. As part of their MTE Labs– the experimental design wing of the studio for far-out idea exploration– Plotkin and his team recently conceptualized the next-gen subway barrier for the New York City subway. It prioritizes safety, but also takes into account ways it can connect travelers through commerce, wayfinding, and local art installations.
Granted, this is a big undertaking. More than five million riders, across 472 stations, use the New York City subway system each week. Any initiative would be a huge undertaking, though it would make the system safer, plus it’s becoming the new standard–Tokyo, Hong Kong, and London all have subway barriers in place. Plotkin’s goal is to spark a new conversation around what the New York City subway might be and, in this visual portfolio, we see both what he has in mind and his insights into a potential design solution for the Metropolitan Transit Authority.
New barriers would make for a safer, more efficient experience.
What compelled you to design a new kind of New York City subway barrier?
Back in January, there were some horrific accidents on the subway tracks. Our team wanted to do something to give back to the city that has given us so much and when we thought about a utilitarian service that every New Yorker has access to on a regular basis, we thought about the subway. We saw both the design of the stations and the rider experience could be reimagined.
We looked at cities like London, Hong Kong, and Tokyo that are so ahead of the game in terms of thinking about what these stations can represent. We came at it from a design angle and thought about how to build community in the process.
What guiding question have you been looking to answer?
When you look at the subway experience today, no one is talking to each other. Everyone is looking down at their phone. We thought about how we could create this barrier to make it safer, introduce commerce opportunities and incorporate local art. Our question was: What will make you look forward to taking the subway?
Additional seating could be added to the barriers.
Tell us about these modular structures.
We looked at the costs and it gets astronomical real quick. So we wanted to be practical and think about the immediate way that we could test some of these ideas and workshop them alongside New Yorkers. Our modular barrier design idea can be installed in phases so you can still operationalize the stations without shutting them down.
For the materials, we're thinking about aluminum. Maybe there is also a plexiglass component to it, so the barriers are transparent. One source of inspiration in the Newark airport AirTrain. That is a north star because it’s a comfortable environment. It arrives on time and is automated.
While New Yorkers will use the subway, there are tourists who might not speak English as their first language. We’re thinking about an LED strip that runs across the top of the barrier and it would visually show when the next train is coming.
Easy access to coffee right there on the platform.
What do people want both tactically and experientialy in the subway system?
I'm a believer in using hospital design as a reference point. There's a big difference between having black walls and ugly seating versus bright colors, textures, and sound.
When we thought about an optimal rider experience, we pulled from what we do in our meet the edge experiential design work. How can we start building in retail? There is untapped real estate in the subway. How can we hyper-localize the stations to their neighborhoods? Can we feature current events that are happening in that neighborhood and how people can get involved? Can we highlight new restaurant openings? And can all of this information help us to build an authentic, strong community, which I think has gotten lost because everyone is looking down at their screens. Let’s use this opportunity to bring people together.
Each station could feature local art from the neighborhood.
The MTA opened up a process to allow for barrier proposals that concluded in September, but you couldn’t participate in it. Why not?
We are not an approved government vendor yet. It’s a year-long process to get verified and approved. But we have still shared our design with them. They love the idea of anything that helps public safety and improves the rider experience. We have taken this idea and visualized it to give people something to look at to have that aha moment. Our design opened up the discussion: Okay, a subway platform barrier. What does that actually look and feel like?
If you got officially involved with this, what would you see as your role?
I would love to have a meet the edge/MTA collaboration station where they give us one station – maybe one that does not have a high ridership – to bake in all of these ideas about color, texture, sound design, community design, and retail opportunities. We know this audience because we are this audience, the next generation of New Yorkers. That's a big selling point. Our clients like that approach. We want to show what's possible through the power of design.
