Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava's vast ribbed structure that soars over the World Trade Center Transportation Hub in New York is captured in these images by British photography duo Hufton + Crow (+ slideshow).

Known as the Oculus, the building is designed to bring light down into the subterranean rail station and shopping centre that quietly opened in March 2016.

It was designed by Calatrava, whose most famous projects include the Ciudad de las Artes y de las Ciencias in Valencia and an extension to the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Hufton + Crow's recent photographs show the two rows of white steel ribs that curve around each side, creating an eye shape in plan.

Glazing in between these elements brings copious amounts of light into the space, which has an open floor surrounded by two levels of shops.
Related story: "Calatrava's transit hub feels utterly scrubbed of memory and dislocated from New York"

The ribs angle inward to meet at the top, where another strip of operable glass arches over.

On its exterior, the ribs curve out and continue skyward to create asymmetric fins.

"Although suggestive of motifs from many traditions ? the Byzantine mandorla, the wings of cherubim above the Ark of the Covenant, or the sheltering wings on Egyptian canopic urns ? the form may be summed up, according to Santiago Calatrava, by the image of a bird released from a child's hands," says the architect's website.

Access to the building at street level is ...