High Line Redux, Part 2
All Photos by and ©Steven L. Cantor, ASLA Except as Noted
From High Line Redux, Part 1: I previously presented a series of photographic essays on the High Line in 2013-2015, A Comparison of the 3 Phases of the High Line 14-Part Series.
It’s stimulating to revisit this now much more well-established park, although a work in progress because major construction is still occurring adjacent to it. Even though the High Line was at first completely closed during the COVID-19 lockdown, park management has found effective ways of opening it during the pandemic, and the public has clearly relished it as an open space system and garden, and a place for exercise, fresh air, conversation, and art.
Rather than a long essay, I offer bulleted points and thoughts for your consideration in two parts from additional High Line walks of November 2022 and December 2021:
Final High Line Redux, Part 2
Publisher’s Note: See High Line Redux, Part 1
16. Simpler treatments work better. The more complex design occurs when the High Line traverses Chelsea at an angle, creating the need for more irregular geometries of planting beds and pavements, which in turn, result in eccentric juxtapositions and sometimes peculiar alignments between plantings and pavements.
Simplest is best.
17. Throughout there is effective night lighting, but sometimes too many overlapping techniques. Perhaps, the most pleasingly dramatic is the strip of lighting under the shiny guardrails running the length of the route on either side. At night the effect can be magical.
Guillermo Galindo’s “Fuente de Lagrimas (Fountain of Tears)” is made from the water stations that volunteers leave near the US-Mexico border to serve those attempting the crossing. The sculpture, which commemorated migrants in the desert, was beautifully night-lit, but was removed last year and the sculpture that takes its place is of a spinning gyroscope form within the view of diverse architecture and plantings of the High Line corridor.
Strip lighting on either side of the High Line illuminates quite effectively the entire pedestrian route …
