News - High Line Finalists Designs Online
Posted by JoeVare, 27 July 2004

The High Line is an abandoned elevated freight rail line on the West Side of Manhattan, running from the LIRR Penn Station railyards (where the current Jets/2012 Olympic Stadium is being proposed) to Gansevoort Street in the Meat Packing District. The line runs parallel to the Hudson River, about a block (or so) west of the river and the Hudson River Park. The Friends of the High Line first sponsored a competition last year for ideas, and now have sponsored a real competition where they expect to choose a real master plan. A winner will be chosen by the end of the summer.

The four finalists are:

1.- Field Operations, landscape architects; Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, architects; Olafur Eliasson, artist; Piet Oudolf, horticulture; Halie Light & L’Observatoire International, lighting
2.- Zaha Hadid Architects, architects; Balmori Associates, landscape architects; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP (Marilyn Jordan Taylor), architects; studio MDA (Markus Dochantschi), architects
3.- Steven Holl Architects, architects; Hargreaves Associates, landscape design; HNTB, technical design
4.- TerraGRAM: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, landscape architects; D.I.R.T. Studio (Julie Bargmann), industrial site design; Beyer Blinder Belle (Neil Kittredge), urban design

If you are in the New York area, the competition boards are on display at the AIA gallery on LaGuardia Place through 14 August 2004. If you are nowhere near New York (or don't want to wait), you can see all four proposals online:
Click here to see the proposals

Update - High Line Finalists Designs Online
Posted by JoeVare, 13 August 2004

According to an article in the New York Times, the team led by Field Operations and Diller, Scofidio + Renfro (and including artist Olafur Eliason) has been chosen to redevelop the High Line. An official announcement is expected after a contract has been negotiated.

The winning team's statement (as posted on the Friends of the High Line site) is

Quote:
What will grow here?

The Field Operations-led team comprises a design collaborative with Diller, Scofidio and Renfro, Olafur Eliasson, Piet Oudolf and Buro Happold. This team is supported by L'Observatoire, Robert Sillman Associates, ETM Associates, Philip Habib Associates, Williams Group, GRB, Control Point, Code Consultants, VJ Associates, DVS Associates, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Creative Time and Pentagram. As a collective, this team brings together seasoned technical expertise with innovative design thinkers that move fluidly in and out of disciplinary boundaries.

Inspired by the melancholic, unruly beauty of the High Line, where nature has reclaimed a once-vital piece of urban infrastructure, the team retools this industrial conveyance into a post-industrial instrument of leisure, life, and growth. 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, this parallel linear experience is marked by slowness, distraction and an other-worldliness that preserves the strange character of the High Line. Providing flexibility and responsiveness to the changing needs, opportunities, and desires of the dynamic context, our proposal is designed to remain perpetually unfinished, sustaining emergent growth and change over time.