Again within the late Nineteen Nineties, when Joshua David and I based Buddies of the Excessive Line, a grass-roots group devoted to maintaining a decrepit elevated freight railway on the west aspect of Manhattan from being demolished, we might by no means have predicted how making a 1.45-mile-long park would additionally rework the gritty underpopulated industrial blocks alongside it right into a bustling space that’s now residence to among the flashiest actual property on the planet. As we speak, the Excessive Line attracts vacationers but additionally, opposite to what you would possibly suppose, loads of New Yorkers. And within the course of it has impressed cities all around the world to reimagine their very own outdated city infrastructure. As we speak its success appears inevitable. The way it truly turned out this fashion is tougher to pin down.
Again in 2004, as we (with the visionary backing of the Bloomberg administration) sought proposals for a park design, we had solely the vaguest notions of what all this would possibly appear like, and the way it might perform. Did the rusty spoil coated in wildflowers must “do” one thing and what would that be precisely?
There have been lots of people who helped out on that, however maybe crucial one, particularly at first when the imaginative and prescient was being set, was the architect Ricardo Scofidio, who died on March 6 at age 89. I can’t stroll on the Excessive Line and never take into consideration how radical and uncompromising so a lot of his concepts had been, but additionally how he was in a position to compromise, making an allowance for different individuals’s concepts, or simply sensible concerns. And but the park by no means feels compromised.
4 design groups had been the finalists in 2004, together with Steven Holl, who had within the Eighties proposed constructing a collection of homes atop the Excessive Line (the mannequin of which is within the assortment of MoMA immediately). There was Zaha Hadid’s proposal, which was futuristic and synthetic, involving, as I recall, AstroTurf. The architect Michael Van Valkenburgh needed to create a brand new model of the outdated deserted tracks, imitating as shut as doable the economic detritus and wild panorama that was already there. None appeared fairly proper.
Then there was the group that included Mr. Scofidio and his spouse and fellow architect, Elizabeth Diller, in addition to the panorama architect James Nook Discipline Operations and the backyard designer Piet Oudolf. I don’t keep in mind precisely what this group stated of their presentation, however I keep in mind the sensation of it. Ms. Diller and Mr. Scofidio began arguing — first with one another, then with Mr. Nook.
Good, we thought, and employed them.
Because it seems, it was Mr. Scofidio we principally labored with, since round that point his agency, Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, gained a contest to rethink elements of Lincoln Middle, and Ms. Diller centered extra on that.
I used to be at first a bit upset. It was Ms. Diller who had dazzled me together with her infectious vitality and large concepts throughout the choice course of. Mr. Scofidio was quieter, extra reserved. He had a sort of built-in glamour — his sharp fits, skinny ties (which I quickly began emulating), his ardour for Porsches. I used to be 34 and never an architect or a planner, and I used to be frankly slightly petrified of him.
On the time, I used to be studying “The Leopard,” the novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, which has one line that actually struck me: “If we wish issues to remain as they’re, issues should change.” That was the design problem of the Excessive Line. So many people had delighted within the wild panorama that had grown up on the railroad after it fell out of use within the Eighties. To make it accessible to the general public, we must rip out all of the wildflowers we cherished, set up drainage and take away a long time of poisonous residue.
There was already a famed elevated linear park in Paris, the Promenade Plantée. However with its benches and planters, it was precisely what we didn’t need, an peculiar park a couple of tales up.
Mr. Scofidio and his group gave us one thing fully new that was impressed by the deserted panorama that we’d began with, whereas not exhibiting off. He would typically say, “My job as an architect is to avoid wasting the Excessive Line from structure.” And there have been no scarcity of huge concepts; structure faculties had for many years requested their college students to provide you with proposals for what to construct there. However Mr. Scofidio’s group centered on stripping issues away and exposing the construction as a substitute of including to it.
A brand new walkway system was on the core of their method. It featured concrete planks that might comb into the landscaping. The walkways might be put collectively from a equipment — planks in numerous sizes and shapes that might be utilized in varied methods. Newly planted wildflowers would push up between the planks, simply as their predecessors did within the gravel ballast of the deserted tracks. It will virtually be like nature making an attempt to reclaim the area.
The Excessive Line was costly to construct, however principally due to the complicated remediation, not the concrete planking system. That wasn’t simply elegant, it was cost-effective.
Above 18th Avenue the Scofidio group designed seating above tenth Avenue, making a theater for watching the visitors under. The ramp for wheelchair entry turned a playground for youngsters.
I get drained each time I climb the steps to my walk-up house. However I by no means really feel drained strolling up the varied stairways to the Excessive Line. Mr. Scofidio’s group designed these stairs and landings simply completely — providing you with a pause in the appropriate locations, a second to relaxation and respect the town. It’s the sort of element nobody notices, however everybody feels.
Mr. Scofidio was wildly creative. I nonetheless remorse not preventing tougher for his proposed glass-walled urinals, that are exhausting to even describe, however suffice it to say, they had been designed in a manner that made it look as if their customers had been watering the grasses rising on the Excessive Line. I additionally want we had taken up his proposal for a see-through swimming pool suspended over 14th Avenue, made from some experimental concrete that he swore could be clear and in addition structural.
In a metropolis that rapidly strikes on to the following huge factor, repeatedly and infrequently irreverently erasing its historical past, block by block, Mr. Scofidio’s contribution to the reimagining of the Excessive Line now feels apparent, one thing we are able to all take as a right. Over 100 tasks impressed by the Excessive Line have surfaced all around the world. Many have succeeded on their very own phrases, however the ones that attempt to simply imitate the Excessive Line don’t work.
As Diller Scofidio grew, the agency moved to places of work close to the Excessive Line, changing into part of the huge actual property shift its creation unleashed. And it participated: The agency designed the Shed arts middle and the high-rise condominium constructing it nests into on the Hudson Yards growth on the northern terminus of the Excessive Line. He embraced the contradictions that had been inherent within the Excessive Line venture: exhausting/delicate, nature/metal, park/growth. He gave us a theater to observe all of it occur, a spot that modified the town the place you possibly can additionally watch as the town modified.
I do know he didn’t love every part that occurred round, and due to, the Excessive Line. I keep in mind a dialogue not way back after we had been planning so as to add a bridge from the park throughout tenth Avenue that might permit a simple path to the Moynihan station practice hub. Would in consequence the Excessive Line turn into crowded with commuters in a manner that might trammel on its spirit? We argued about it. (The footbridge, which Mr. Scofidio was not concerned with the design of ultimately, opened in 2023.)
Mr. Scofidio by no means needed the Excessive Line to be too, effectively, pedestrian. He considered it as a linear path that challenged its guests to interrupt out of linearity. Strolling it, you’re each noticed and observer, a part of one thing bigger than your self, directly humbled and empowered like solely New York Metropolis could make you are feeling.
