The idea to turn it into a city park was born five years ago, and last year an international idea competition was announced, for which 720 proposals were received. The most daring of them was to turn the High Line into a huge outdoor pool.
The winning project will be announced in August and construction is due to start in 2006.
The four final projects were developed by "interprofessional" teams made up of architects, landscape designers and artists.
Landscaping Bureau Field Operations and architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro developed their proposal in collaboration with artist Olafur Eliasson and British engineers Buro Happold. The project is called "Agri-tektura" and is a mixed natural and man-made environment (including: bridge, hill, ravine and "flyover"), with lawns, open and covered areas of public space. Nature's life in the High Line area needs to be streamlined and made more "intensive", defusing the fabric of urban development.
Zaha Hadid's bureau, along with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Balmori Associates and MDA, have come up with an elegant futuristic neighborhood development project. They tried to establish links between the natural landscape and the architectural environment. The main theme of their work was the water flow, which is reminiscent of the forms of structures. Open and closed paths for walking will traverse the new park, aiming at the heart of the new High Line - the market in the southern part of it.
The TerraGRAM group (landscape design firms Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and D. I. R. T. Studio in conjunction with the architectural bureau Beyer Blinder Belle) presented a "park meander" project, consisting of mini-forests, urban canyon and thickets of azaleas. The authors also emphasize the beauty of the urban landscape - no matter how decadent and destructive for a person it may seem. Their special attention was paid to the connection of the street and the former flyover by stairs, which turns into an observation platform for lovers of urban landscapes.
Stephen Hall's bureau, in collaboration with Hargreaves Associates and HNTB, designed a "suspended valley" connecting, on one side, an observation tower and a public space for 500 people, on the other, a water taxi dock on the Hudson River. Hall's goal was to create as many green spaces as possible with a healthy ecological situation.
