NEW YORK—When the new South Ferry terminal of New York City’s No. 1 train opens in January, it will feature an ambitious new artwork — a site-specific installation by the Brooklyn-based artists Doug and Mike Starn.

The complex work, three years in the making, features curved glass walls laced with silhouettes of trees, a marble mosaic topographic map of Manhattan, and imagery from nearby Battery Park, according to the New York Times.

Although this is the first public work made by the 47-year-old identical twins, they see it as part of their continuing project, “Structure of Thought,” which deals with time and natural bonds.

“We’re working with the idea of the splitting and changing of tree branches and of branches of the subway system,” Mike Starns said. “It’s something that happens in time as well as space.”

See It Split, See It Change, as the installation is titled, is one of the largest ever artworks in the New York Mass Transit Authority's "Arts for Transit" program. And at a cost of more than $1 million, it is the most expensive to date.

Construction of the South Ferry terminal building, which is entirely new, was financed primarily through funds set aside by the federal government to help rebuild Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attacks. The total cost for the station is approximately $530 million. The exact date for the opening has yet to be announced.