The High Line - New York City, U.S.A.

[khris]

The High Line by James Corner Field Operations
and Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Section 1 of the High Line, a 1.5 mile long park on an abandoned elevated railway, opened earlier this week in New York.

The winning proposal for a competition in 2004, the design is a redevelopment of an abandoned, elevated freight-railway that spans 22 blocks through the west side of Manhattan.

The High Line is designed by landscape designers James Corner Field Operations and architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Photographs are by Iwan Baan.

Here’s text from James Corner Field Operations:

James Corner Field Operations led the winning design team for the 2004 international competition in collaboration with Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Piet Oudolf and many other expert specialists for the High Line, an unusual 1.45 mile long, abandoned elevated railway that spans 22 city blocks in between and through buildings and along the west side of Manhattan.

As the lead designer of the High Line, James Corner Field Operations has led all aspects of the project including design (from concept through construction), project management and coordination and construction administration.

Inspired by the melancholic, found beauty of the High Line, where nature has reclaimed a once-vital piece of urban infrastructure, the design team aims to refit this industrial conveyance into a post-industrial instrument of leisure.

By changing the rules of engagement between plant life and pedestrians, our strategy of agri-tecture combines organic and building materials into a blend of changing proportions that accommodates the wild, the cultivated, the intimate, and the hyper-social.

In stark contrast to the speed of Hudson River Park, the singular linear experience of the new High Line landscape is marked by slowness, distraction and an other-worldliness that preserves the strange, wild character of the High Line, yet doesn’t underestimate its intended use and popularity as a public space.

This notion underpins the overall strategy the invention of a new paving and planting system that allows for various ratios of hard to soft surface that transition from high use areas (100% hard) to richly vegetated biotopes (100% soft), with a variety of experiential gradients in between.

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[UserNameToronto]

Be still my beating heart!

 

[fiendishlibrarian]

Checking it out this weekend!

 

[Conrad Black]

I was amazed years ago when I first saw the High Line. An elevated rail line that actually went through buildings. Fantastic reuse here.

 

[CityPlaceN1]

That's very cool!

 

[allabootmatt]

Looks incredible. But one wonders about the durability of this sort of thing, and the inherent optimism of unconventional plans. The history of Modernism is full of examples of quasi-public spaces that have fallen into disuse, disrepair, and even danger. The elevated walkways at the South Bank Centre in London are an example, as are those around City Hall in Toronto. Historically, these hybrid spaces just haven't worked very well. Now, New York is New York and this isn't the 60s, but it seems obvious to me that the attractiveness and safety of the High Line are going to depend on a great deal of continued maintenance and surveillance. Building that into a structure may prove to be a bad move...

 

[adma]

I was thinking about the fate of the City Hall walkways, too--though uncertain which way to leverage the argument (i.e. NPS as an omen of what could happen to the High Line, or the High Line as a model of what NPS could still be?). Maybe one can also learn from those hyped 80s-style urban malls and festival marketplaces which became forlorn or worse once the touristy/food-courty novelty wore off.

Then again, from whatever I could tell, the Promenade Plantée in Paris has endured...

 

[Ladies Mile]

I don't see the appeal in this, to be frank. There are no views per se and the corridor is shadowed by some fairly grim buildings both old and new. There is no way to interact with any of the adjacent buildings. Put this together with the fact that the Chelsea Gallery district is sinking fast and I imagine the High Line will take its place with numerous other American pedestrian zones as an idealistic but seldom-used relic.

 

[fiendishlibrarian]

I loved it. Top notch materials, well maintained (it's patrolled by NYC parks officers, and cleaned by High Line org. staffers), great views of the Hudson and UWS, and if you work your way north there's a bar called Moran's on 10th that's a nice place to have a pint or three when you're contemplating where next to go. Everyone I saw there (and it was packed) seemed to have a great time. There are Muskoka-like chairs on one side of the bridge that face west, and when I was there people were sunning themselves, reading, and just enjoying the scene. As the foilage grows and turns into Fall colours, I think it will be even more of a gathering place.

 

[adma]

One thing I've been wondering about the High Line relative to earlier "failed ped zone" projects: in an era when cell phones are the new television, do people (or at least urban people) actually have more incentive to go out and enjoy themselves?

I mean, from casual observation, urban public spaces of all sorts seem busier and healthier and more intensely utilized than ever--a far cry from a quarter century ago when the mass evening paseo in many a Mediterranean town even on the most frigid January day seemed exotically unreal to hoser eyes like mine.

Interesting notion: in the postwar years, home entertainment (TV et al) monkey-wrenched urbanism. Now that its handheld successors aren't so confined to home, urbanism's recovering from that big long chill..

 

[JasonParis]

Excellent point that's worthy of a thesis Adma!