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collaboration with Friends of the High
Line, the Design Trust conducted a comprehensive
planning study and created strategies for
the reuse of the elevated High Line railway
track, a neglected landmark on Manhattan's
West Side. The Design Trust fellows investigated
the High Line's urban context, explored
its design implications, and proposed feasible
reuse alternatives for the structure, documented
in the publication Reclaiming the High
Line. Due in part to this publication,
transformation of the High Line into a
pedestrian walkway and linear park is now
all but assured.
The project was selected based on its
urban and aesthetic merits, its extraordinary
value to the neighborhood, and its universal
significance as a precedent for the rehabilitation
of disused infrastructure. The fellows
focused on programming implications and
processes, and not on the development
of a specific design for the reuse of
the High Line. They analyzed existing
design work for the High Line and existing
models for reuse, most notably Paris'
Promenade Plantée, in order to
support reuse and preservation initiatives
and to clarify both development possibilities
and vulnerabilities.
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Design
Trust fellow Casey Jones spent 12 months
meeting with community groups, development
experts and design professionals to evaluate
the feasibility of reuse alternatives,
including transportation, commercial,
arts-oriented and open-space scenarios,
as well as demolition. He also studied
the High Line's history and physical
conditions, local zoning, current land
use and community needs.
This discovery
process laid the groundwork for Reclaiming
the High Line, which advocates a unified,
progressive design response, reflecting
the original vision of the High Line
as a vital component of the "City
of Tomorrow." It also proposes an
inclusive planning approach that considers
the needs of community members, business
and property owners, and the State and
City. The study provides specific recommendations
for each of the neighborhoods that the
High Line intersects.
A second fellowship was awarded to architect/writer
Keller Easterling, an assistant professor
of architecture at Yale University. Easterling
created a website, The
High Line — Plotting
NYC, comprising four speculative environments
for the High Line. The user can experience
the High Line from the perspective of
a developer, an animal, a tourist, and
a partygoer. Not limited to attainable
possibilities, its purely conjectural
environments provide a counterpoint to
the fact-based study.
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