Candy Chan, an architect living in New York City, has what she describes as a "love-hate relationship" with her subway system. Fascinated in particular by the mechanisms of the MTA's stations – their navigation and placemaking methods, their circulation patterns – Chan was surprised to learn that there are no comprehensive, 3D maps of the station interiors available to the public.

To anyone easily turned around by traveling underground, the experience of emerging from the station on the wrong side of the street is a familiar and frustrating one, and travel can be discombobulating from the get-go. 3D station maps are commonplace in Hong Kong, where Chan is from, then why not New York? So Chan set out to map the stations herself, as a labor of love.

Her ensuing "Project Subway NYC" is a blog and resource, chronicling Chan's studies of the subways and gorgeous diagrams of their interior structures. The Project began this past July, and Chan just released a new slew of station maps – pictured here is her documentation on 42nd Street Grand Central station. You can file a request on her blog for the station she should diagram next.

Check out more station diagrams, sketches and photographs in the image gallery.