During our trip to New York this year, Ray and I visited the Highline. The Highline project is something I learned about a few years ago when I began researching projects that dealt with urbanization and restoration.
To give you a quick overview, the project is a restoration project where designers, architects, urban planners, engineers, and other contractors worked together to rethink an abandoned railway that passed through lower/west Manhattan. The railway had been unused since the 80s and it wasn’t until 1999 when “Friends of the Highline” began to discuss efforts for restoration.
History of the Highline – Excerpt from the website
“The High Line was built in the 1930s, as part of a massive public-private infrastructure project called the West Side Improvement. It lifted freight traffic 30 feet in the air, removing dangerous trains from the streets of Manhattan’s largest industrial district. No trains have run on the High Line since 1980. Friends of the High Line, a community-based non-profit group, formed in 1999 when the historic structure was under threat of demolition. Friends of the High Line works in partnership with the City of New York to preserve and maintain the structure as an elevated public park.”
Now, the park is designed in a way that showcases the dialogue between man verse nature. The railway and tapered wood boards weave in and out of the wild landscape, in a beautiful fusion between controlled construction and uncontrolled environment.
Below are some images from our walking tour this February.
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