| The phrase 'green space' has new currency in contemporary society. The High Line park, as a complex example of green space stitched over the existing urban fabric, places the city of New York at the forefront of global efforts to 'repair' the urban landscape. Local goals to refurbish and enhance the city reflect larger questions about the environment, sustainability, and our cultural understanding of 'nature.';The High Line park, as open-air art space, urban garden and busy promenade functions within and in spite of the city below. The site, in all its complexity, dictates that the careful reader consider themes in landscape architectural history and practice, art history, as well as the design field. These discourses help to carefully untangle the choreography inscribed within the site. Architects James Corner Filed Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro offer art installations, innovative landscape design, and space for diverse cultural events, coaxing the High Line into an alternate relationship with the city. This minimalist garden offers the sort of blinkered history of the city that allows the viewer to initiate and cultivate her own narrative. In the study that follows, the argument demonstrates how the High Line operates as a space couched in landscape urbanism, a practice dedicated to the contemporary urban subject. Working from the formal visage of the site, this thesis assesses the industrial, virtual, and biologic data path that is the High Line park. |
