HIGH LINER

Posted by rachelhawkes on June 8, 2009 · 2 Comments 

So there’s this thing hanging out above New York City called the High Line. Maybe you have heard of it, or you’ve caught glances of it hovering over the street, peeking out behind buildings and cutting through the horizon from Gansevoort Street to 30th Street. The steel structure was built to carry freight trains 30 feet in the air in the 30s as a response to a growing number of train/auto accidents in Manhattan’s vast industrial areas. This thing was even designed to cut right through buildings! See?
It sort of lost its purpose when interstate trucking got popular and just hung out up there for a while, feeling kind of pointless but boasting a sweet view of New York. In the 80s, grumpy condo-hungry jerks lobbied to take the whole thing down, and were successful and doing so to the southernmost part of it. “Railroad enthusiasts” (cute) finally stepped in when there was talk of destroying the whole damn thing. Suggestions to start the High Line’s rail service up again didn’t really make sense, as the (most confusing ever, always under construction, stop for 10 minutes in the a dark tunnel sure why not) MTA was a pretty effective, successful public transportation system. What could be done with a massive, beautifully engineered, vastly elevated platform which offers views of the skyline and Hudson River? Preservation, reuse, alternative transportation, green space, public space… The High Line has it all.
720 submissions from all over the world were considered for the redesign, and they finally decided on this one:
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Pretty cool right? (Diller Scofidio + Renfro please hire me). It includes sloped seating, big open gardens, sculpture, an LED lighting system (of course), and is make up of virtually seamless concrete-cast plates. Bloomberg is opening this thing today or tomorrow, I’m pretty sure. I will take photos at dusk of it’s beauty, Rebecca, and you can be jealous you aren’t here.
Love,
Rachel.

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