The series, originating from ballpoint pen doodles in 1962, features flat, interlocking shapes and striated coloring in red, white, and blue against black backgrounds.

[2] The sculpture was made with 25 tons of aluminum and steel, fiberglass, and plastic resin covered with polyurethane paint and composed of "crude interlocking forms and thick coloring-book lines".

[9][11] The artist began the Hourloupe series in the early 1960s, characterized by flat, interlocking shapes and striated coloring, typically red, white, and blue, often set against a black background.

[13] He said: "I could not have hoped for a place better suited to this monument (...) Indeed, this plaza, and the prodigious buildings which rise above and surrounding it, are the dramatic illustration of an extraordinary celebration of reason, logic, and calculations".

[11] When a maquette of the sculpture was presented during a press conference, critic David L. Shirley of The New York Times said that the work looked "like a weird cross‐pollination of mammoth Alice‐in‐Wonderland mushrooms and a jig saw puzzle for giants".

[14] Rosenberg praised the scale of the sculpture made of "irregular horizontal shapes that appear to float above deliberately clumsy bases—the 'trunks' of the trees" and its ability to maintain a balanced relationship between human presence and the surrounding skyscrapers.