A towering altar built from oversized woven marigolds is set to bloom at Flatiron North Plaza starting Monday, October 26, anchoring the Flatiron NoMad Partnership's fifth annual Día de los Muertos celebration. Called Twenty Petal Flower, the tiered, candle-lit installation will remain on view at Broadway and 23rd Street through Tuesday, November 3, and visitors are encouraged to stop by on their own schedule and leave mementos of people they have lost, even if they skip the festival itself.
The altar was designed by Mestiz Studio, founded by architect and designer Daniel Valero in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in collaboration with Brooklyn-based nonprofit fabricator Powerhouse Arts, according to Time Out. Valero described the project's ambition simply: “Flowers become an architecture of celebration,” he said, per the outlet's report. Mestiz Studio, which specializes in furniture and public art rooted in traditional regional artisan techniques, recently opened an expanded studio and showroom at the historic Fábrica La Aurora complex in San Miguel de Allende, according to Galerie Magazine.
A Brooklyn Powerhouse Behind the Build
Powerhouse Arts, the nonprofit manufacturing partner that helped bring the altar to life, operates out of a 170,000-square-foot facility inside a 120-year-old former transit power station in Gowanus, long nicknamed The Batcave, which reopened in 2023 following a $20 million environmental remediation, according to CBS News New York. The building spent years as an abandoned squatter and graffiti hub before its historic restoration, the station's report notes. That industrial history now underpins a cross-border collaboration linking Mexican artisan craft with Brooklyn fabrication muscle.
The altar's name draws directly from Nahuatl: Twenty Petal Flower comes from cempōhualxōchitl, the word for the cempasúchil, or Mexican marigold, per Time Out's reporting. The flower has been cultivated in central Mexico for more than 1,000 years, taking its name from the Nahuatl words cempoalli, meaning twenty, and xōchitl, meaning flower, according to NewYork4U. Its bright orange petals and distinctive scent are traditionally believed to guide visiting spirits back to their living relatives, the outlet reports, and the installation's design traces that lineage from Michoacán's marigold fields to the altar now rising in Manhattan.
A Free Festival With Dance, Music and Craft
The altar sits at the center of a free, all-ages celebration running from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. on October 28 at Flatiron North Plaza, per Time Out's account. Calpulli Mexican Dance Company will present Mexican folklore performances; the troupe, founded in New York City in 2003, takes its name from the Nahuatl word for family or big house and has performed at venues including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, according to its own organizational history. Visitors can also try a painted sugar skull activity, as reported by Time Out.
The festival's lineup extends well beyond dance, with live music from NYC-based collective Son Pecadores, paper-flower crafting led by Mano a Mano: Mexican Culture Without Borders, printmaking with Poster House, and booklet craft activities from the Center for Book Arts, according to the Flatiron NoMad Partnership. Colorful papel picado decorations will also feature throughout the celebration, Time Out notes. Complementing the central altar, Los Angeles-based Tanya Aguiñiga Studio designed a district-wide papel picado display installed across Flatiron South Plaza from October 1 through November 3, extending the celebration beyond the North Plaza altar itself.
Symbols Rooted in Centuries-Old Tradition
Día de los Muertos is a Mexican tradition with pre-Hispanic roots that celebrates the memory and presence of the dead, and offerings of food and flowers are believed to help welcome departed loved ones home, per Time Out's reporting. In 2008, UNESCO inscribed the holiday on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, recognizing a tradition that evolved from Aztec and Nahua ancestral practices and honors the cyclical relationship between life and death, according to the Purdue University Latino Cultural Center.
Traditional ofrendas incorporate symbols for four fundamental elements: water to quench a spirit's thirst, cut paper to represent wind, pan de muerto and food offerings to represent earth, and altar candles to represent fire, according to the School of Visual Arts. Those same principles guide Twenty Petal Flower's design, which honors the agricultural workers and artisans whose labor sustains Día de Muertos traditions, per Time Out, and is lit with warm, candle-like illumination evoking that same symbolic fire.
A Milestone Year for the Flatiron NoMad Partnership
This year's celebration also marks the Flatiron NoMad Partnership's 20th anniversary as the business improvement district overseeing public space and cultural programming across the neighborhood. BID President James Mettham has noted that the fifth annual Día de Muertos celebration fits the organization's broader push to turn neighborhood plazas into destinations for shared public culture, per the Flatiron NoMad Partnership. The group is also highlighting Mexican- and Latinx-owned neighborhood businesses through its local business guide, according to Time Out's report.
The festival's plazas are also part of ongoing discussions about the district's public spaces and potential redesigns. Temporary installations like Twenty Petal Flower offer a glimpse of how those plazas might continue to function as cultural gathering spaces once any permanent redesign is complete.
