By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Published: August
12, 2004
I feel that there is something prophetic and profound about what is discussed in this article.
A team of New York-based
architects led by Field Operations and Diller, Scofidio & Renfro has been
selected to design a master plan that would transform an abandoned section of
elevated freight track into a public park that would weave its way north from
the meatpacking district to Hell's Kitchen, two stories above the city.
The city and Friends of the High
Line, a nonprofit group that has been overseeing the development of the High
Line elevated track, have yet to officially announce the selection, which was
made last week. City officials and members of the architectural team still have
to work out the details of a design contract that could eventually encompass a
series of public gardens, a swimming pool, an outdoor theater and food halls, a
project running for more than 20 city blocks from Gansevoort Street to West
34th Street.
Nonetheless, the selection marks
a critical step in one of the most compelling urban planning initiatives in the
city's recent history. The preliminary design succeeds in preserving the High
Line's tough industrial character without sentimentalizing it. Instead, it
creates a seamless blend of new and old, one rooted in the themes of decay and
renewal that have long captivated the imagination of urban thinkers.
Perhaps more important, the
design confirms that even in a real estate climate dominated by big development
teams and celebrity architects, thoughtful, creative planning ideas - initiated
at the grass-roots level - can lead to startlingly original results. As the
process continues, the issue will be whether the project's advocates can
maintain such standards in the face of increasing commercial pressures.
Architects have fantasized about
the High Line since at least the early 1980's, when Steven Holl first completed
a theoretical proposal to build a "bridge of houses" that straddled
the elevated tracks. Property owners considered the line an urban blight, and
only a few years ago they were lobbying for its demolition. Friends of the High
Line defeated that effort, in part by convincing Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and
city planning officials that a revamped High Line could act as a spur to urban
renewal. Eventually, the site was conceived as a public promenade, one that
could be used to bind together the communities that lie beneath it.
The city planning office,
meanwhile, devised a plan that would allow property owners below the High Line
to transfer their development rights to other sites within the district.
Friends of the High Line has also raised $3.5 million in private money for the
project. The city has committed another $15.75 million over the next four years.
The strength of the Field
Operations design is its ability to reflect a sense of communal mission without
wiping away the site's historical character. These competing interests are
balanced with exquisite delicacy.
The architects begin by creating
a system of concrete planks that taper slightly at either end. The planks will
be laid out along the High Line's deck in parallel bands, creating a pedestrian
walkway that meanders back and forth as it traces the path of the elevated
tracks, occasionally fading away to make room for a series of colorful gardens.
The gardens embody competing
forces - some wild, others carefully cultivated. At various points along the
deck, for example, the existing landscape of meadow grass, wildflowers, weeds
and gravel will be preserved. At other points, that landscape will be replaced
by an explosion of vividly colored fields and birch trees.
The idea is to create a
virtually seamless flow between past and future realities, a blend of urban
grit and cosmopolitan sophistication. But it is also to slow the process of
change, to focus the eye on the colliding forces - both natural and man-made -
that give cities their particular beauty. That vision has a more subversive,
social dimension: to offer a more measured alternative to the often brutal pace
of gentrification.