High Line Winner

As reported in a previous post, the High Line RFQ yielded four finalists for the abandoned, elevated railway's masterplan. Nicholas Ouroussoff reports (registration req'd) in his new post at The New York Times that the team led by Field Operations and Diller + Scofidio + Renfro is the winner.



This is the first article I have seen of Ouroussoff since he replaced Muschamp as The Times's architecture critic. It is an intelligent critique of the winning design, with a concise history of the High Line project, insight into its politics, and words of caution as the project advances. A snippet:

The idea is to create a virtually seamless flow between past and future realities, a blend of urban grit and cosmopolitan sophistication. But it is also to slow the process of change, to focus the eye on the colliding forces - both natural and man-made - that give cities their particular beauty. That vision has a more subversive, social dimension: to offer a more measured alternative to the often brutal pace of gentrification.