This section of the exhibition features a number of the competition's notable entries, accompanied by models and/or wall panels of description. These include:

ANTENNA DESIGN NEW YORK INC. (U.S.), reflecting both Eastern and Western traditions, proposed a design using the ancient Japanese idea of a Dream Pillow to explore the mysteries of cultural receptivity by carving a chaise longue with pillow from a granite outcropping in Central Park with HD-Rosetta data discs buried inside the carving.

CAPLES JEFFERSON ARCHITECHTS (U.S.) features two young New York architects who designed an obelisk to fall apart, gradually, over the next 1,000 years. It would be placed on U Thant Island, a rocky outcropping in the East River near the United Nations.

COOPER UNION (U.S.) encouraged students and faculty of this renowned New York City school of design and architecture to make the design project a semester-long undertaking, producing a titanium sphere 30 inches in diameter (pictured above), surrounded by a filigreed titanium armature. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine agreed to hang the capsule inside the Cathedral, over a meditative labyrinth tiled into the floor.

KENJI EKUAN, GK DESIGN GROUP (JAPAN) was represented by Kenji Ekuan's proposal from Tokyo to construct a metal capsule, the shape of which is derived from the seed of the lotus flower. The capsule would be loaded onto a launch vehicle and blasted into a long elliptical orbit around the sun, calculated to return to earth in exactly 1,000 years.

WES JONES (U.S.) suggested a design incorporating two metal containers, one for storing flat HD-Rosetta data discs, the second for three-dimensional objects. These are armored with mechanical bolt-on components such as motorized doors, automatic argon gas injectors, atomic clocks, and viewing devices.

JARON LANIER (U.S.), along with two colleagues (a Columbia University neurologist and a technical illustrator), brought their creativity to bear on genetics in an amazing plan. All living things contain DNA, including some strands called introns. The proposal is to translate the contents of all the millennium issues of The New York Times Magazine from two-digit (0-1) computer code into four-digit DNA language (A-G-C-T) and then load that information onto the introns of a cockroach. After 14 years of interbreeding, every New York City cockroach involved would carry this information in its DNA — making every cockroach in the city an "archival" cockroach.

MAYA LIN (U.S.), renowned for her Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., proposed a simple granite container buried under a polished stone slab located in New York City's Central Park, at the heart of a grand spiral of English oak trees. Even if these long-lived trees should, over centuries, disappear, their distinctive roots would remain.

JURGEN BEY for DROOG DESIGN (Netherlands), a Dutch collective, selected three things that last for centuries: heirlooms, trash, and tombs. Jurgen Bey, proposed piggy-backing useful data on all three forms. But the most arresting idea involves human bodies as time capsules-the idea is to engrave patients' medical histories on artificial hips, pacemakers, teeth.

OCEAN (Finland, Norway, Germany), a group of designers who live in Helsinki, Oslo, and Cologne, and who practice together in cyberspace, suggested building nine individual capsules which would be air-dropped onto the Antarctic ice shelf. Because of global warming, the ice would melt and the capsules would be released progressively over the centuries into the oceans - the latter-day equivalent of a note in a bottle.

DAGMAR RICHTER (Germany), with offices in Santa Monica and Berlin, combined two kinds of spatial organization in her proposed capsule. One kind is the classic geometry represented by the square, the grid, and the cube. The second is the fluid, mutable morphology associated with the natural realm. She suggested two rectilinear containers of cupalloy metal surrounded by a glass figure resembling a stylized swan-all encased within a mirrored chamber buried in the ground. A window of clear glass at the top would enable people to peer inside and an image of the glass swan would be projected above ground by the mirrors.

PENTAGRAM (U.S.) proposed a fashion accessory for the Statue of Liberty. The time capsule would be carefully insulated, sheathed in metal, and set to dangle from her enormous ear.

GREGG LYNN & JEFFREY KIPNIS (U.S.)would create 99 capsules to be installed, one a year, throughout New York City. The date would be encased in thermoplastic, inside a metal casing which in turn would be scored, like an LP record, with grooves and ridges that could produce sound when played with a stylus.

MORPHOSIS (U.S.)assumed that the Coca-Cola can is the most mass-produced object in the world, and they proposed locating a capsule in Central Park and then printing the map of its whereabouts on 4.5 billion cans of the soft drink, judging that someone somewhere would always have knowledge of the time capsule's location.

The leading entries in the Times Capsule design competition can be seen in greater detail, including audio interviews, at http://www.nytimes.com/millennium.

introduction | what is time? | notable entries
winning design | contents of times capsule | visitor information
the new york times