The New York Post writes that two million people have visited the High Line park since its opening last June. Now, the second phase of the High Line is expected to open next spring. The new section, which run from 20th to 30th streets, will extend the High Line by a full mile. The second section of the park will be straighter than the stretch that runs from Gansevoort to 20th street, but include more varied and innovative design elements.
According to The New York Post, the “most over-the-top feature” begins at 25th street, the site of the “Woodland Flyover,” which will lift park-goers “15 feet above the old rail trestle through a stand of magnolia trees.” Peter Mullan, the park’s vice president of planning and design, said: “The walkway leaves the High Line itself. You’ll be walking through the canopy of trees.” The idea for the flyover design came from the organic growth on the original abandoned rail line. The tracks once sprouted a small forest of trees and shrub. Now that forest will be recreated, but with magnolia trees.
A bit south, from 22nd to 23rd streets, new seating steps will rise above a lawn that “lifts up on a small hillside.” In addition, a new “Chelsea Thicket” will feature native plants and wildflowers that will be much denser than in the first section of the park. Fast Company adds that the plantings in the new thicket “have been carefully thought out–most are species that grow naturally, but they’ve been interspersed with other plantings, so that each stretch always has something in bloom during growing season.”
Read the article and check out the High Line’s animated tour, videos, and slideshow of the overall park design.
In other news, James Corner Field Operations, the designer of the High Line park, just won first prize in an international design competition for the Qianhai region of Shenzhen. According to Bustler, the site will feature 4,500 acres of reclaimed land surrounding Qianhai Harbor on the western coast of Shenzhen. “Upon implementation, Qianhai is envisioned to be the financial, logistics and service hub of Shenzhen, and a major new urban center – a ‘Manhattan’ — in the Pearl River Delta mega-region, linking Hong Kong to Shenzhen and Guangzhou.”
Bustler adds that the design’s organizing principle is water. “The design is dense, compact, mixed, sustainable and centered around the area’s most important resource – water. The proposal breaks the site into five manageable development sub- districts through the introduction of five ‘Water Fingers’ that extend along the line of the existing rivers and channels, connecting the adjacent city perpendicular to the harbor’s edge. These Fingers function as both innovative hydrological infrastructures and new public parkland. They process and remediate stormwater, while expanding the amount of development frontage onto public open spaces that structure and organize the larger city.”
Image credit: High Line / James Corner Field Operations & Diller, Scofidio + Renfro
