Called The Spur, the widest open space of the High Line opened Tuesday morning, marking the completion of the popular elevated park. The Spur is a 128 meter section that extends and finishes over the intersection of 10th Avenue at West 30th Street.

At its end, a 5-meter bronze sculpture by Simone Leigh, on the center of this new public square, which offers vistas in every direction.
"The Spur opens new vistas to and from the city and visually reconnects the High Line back to the 10th Avenue Overlook on 17th Street," added Ricardo Scofidio of DS+R.

In 2008 the High Line community activists initiated an advocacy campaign (“Save the Spur”) to save this last remaining section of the original rail structure. They rallied together to preserve the abandoned tracks, with New York City acquiring the section in 2012. The final design for the Spur, led by DS+R, was announced in 2016 and took into account community input. Over 10 years later, the protected, reimagined Spur opens.

The large deck over the intersection will feature public programming, and restrooms have been tucked under a raised planter nearby. The raised planters that lead to the deck have the deepest soil in all of the High Line, allowing for bigger trees to be planted.
 
"The design of the Spur has gone through many iterations over the years: from theater, to garden, to woodland, to event platform, to an immersive ‘bowl,’ among others," said James Corner, who led the design of the Spur, as well as other sections of the High Line, in collaboration with Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Planting Designer Piet Oudolf.

"But we ended up with the best solution, typical High Line: tough, simple, and authentic. Leaving the large lofted space of the Coach Passage, you enter the Spur through a lush woodland, which opens into a large clearing with large-scale artwork on the Plinth. This dramatic space is flanked by generous seating and overlooks and immerses you in the massive scale of the surrounding city."

 

Description of project by High Line

The Spur is public space made by people, for people. We listened to what people wanted when choosing features for the Spur. That means James Corner Field Operations (Project Lead), Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Planting Designer Piet Oudolf—the same design team behind the first three sections of the park—created a space for more space for public programming, restrooms, access points, food, art, and plants.

The flow of the space was designed to create moments of interactions—both between people and with the surroundings.

Coach Passage

With cathedral-like 60 ft. tall ceilings, the Coach Passage crosses through Coach’s global headquarters at 10 Hudson Yards. The passage is named in recognition of the Coach Foundation’s generous gift to the High Line’s capital campaign. Primarily a hardscape, a series of planted balconies stretch out from under the building to provide visitors views of the sky, the surrounding buildings, and the other sections of the High Line over 30th Street. The iconic rails and benches of the High Line transition visitors from the walkway to the focal point of the Spur.

Threshold

Once through the Passage, visitors are greeted by two large “tilted” planters, rising like hills from the deck. These create a dramatic planted threshold into the Spur and provide a lush wall of greenery after coming through the Coach Passage or from the streets of Midtown below.

Piazza

Finally, visitors arrive to an open piazza with panoramic views up and down 10th Avenue and 30th Street. The piazza retains the existing rail tracks that once led to USPS Morgan Processing and Distribution Center, reminding visitors of the history of the structure. Thanks to a series of cascading wooden seating steps on the east and west sides of the Spur, this new section provides critical space for hosting more people at our public programs and art events.

The Spur provides a home for a revamped High Line Shop; an open-air programming space that will expand the scope of our programs and number of attendees we’re able to welcome; new restrooms; and the Plinth, a dedicated site for monumental artworks curated by High Line Art.

The Plinth

The design of the Spur gardens engages with the surrounding urban context with a “less is more” approach. The natural plantings are reminiscent of the original self-sown landscape and the rough allure of the High Line structure and rail tracks.

With a Northeastern woodland palette as inspiration, the Spur plantings comprise 8,500 perennials, 69 trees and shrubs, all new species for the park, and the largest planting beds on the High Line.

Grasses, perennials, and a mix of popular clematis and wisteria vines hang from gardens along the Coach Passage, and flowering beds in the piazza are punctuated by the theatrical changing colors of witch alder shrubs.

The giant tilted planters in the threshold contain stalwarts like hackberry, sweetgum, and black tupelo, alongside exuberant hart’s tongue fern, yellow lady’s slipper, and strawberry bush.

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Diller Scofidio + Renfro Studio. Founded in 1981, Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) is a design studio whose practice spans the fields of architecture, urban design, installation art, multi-media performance, digital media, and print. With a focus on cultural and civic projects, DS+R’s work addresses the changing role of institutions and the future of cities. The studio is based in New York and is comprised of over 100 architects, designers, artists and researchers, led by four partners--Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, Charles Renfro and Benjamin Gilmartin.

DS+R completed two of the largest architecture and planning initiatives in New York City’s recent history: the adaptive reuse of an obsolete, industrial rail infrastructure into the High Line, a 1.5 mile-long public park, and the transformation of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ half-century-old campus. The studio is currently engaged in two more projects significant to New York, scheduled to open in 2019: The Shed, the first multi-arts center designed to commission, produce, and present all types of performing arts, visual arts, and popular culture, and the renovation and expansion of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Most recently, the studio was also selected to design: Adelaide Contemporary, a new gallery and public sculpture park in South Australia; the Centre for Music, which will be a permanent home for the London Symphony Orchestra; and a new collection and research centre for the V&A in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Recent projects include the 35-acre Zaryadye Park adjacent to the Kremlin in Moscow; the Museum of Image & Sound on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro; The Broad, a contemporary art museum in Los Angeles; the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley; the Roy and Diana Vagelos Education Center at Columbia University in New York; and The Juilliard School in Tianjin, China.

DS+R’s independent work includes the Blur Building, a pavilion made of fog on Lake Neuchâtel for the Swiss Expo; Exit, an immersive data-driven installation about human migration at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris; Charles James: Beyond Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Arbores Laetae, an animated micro-park for the Liverpool Biennial; Musings on a Glass Box at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris; and Pierre Chareau: Modern Architecture and Design at the Jewish Museum in New York. A major retrospective of DS+R’s work was mounted at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Most recently, the studio designed two site-specific installations at the 2018 Venice Biennale and the Costume Institute’s Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. DS+R also directed and produced The Mile-Long Opera: a biography of 7 o’clock, a free, choral performance featuring 1,000 singers atop the High Line, co-created with David Lang.

DS+R has authored several books: The High Line (Phaidon Press, 2015), Lincoln Center Inside Out: An Architectural Account (Damiani, 2013), Flesh: Architectural Probes (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011), Blur: The Making of Nothing (Harry N. Abrams, 2002), and Back to the Front: Tourisms of War (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996).

DS+R has been distinguished with the first MacArthur Foundation fellowship awarded in the field of architecture, Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential" list, the Smithsonian Institution's 2005 National Design Award, the Medal of Honor and the President's Award from AIA New York, and Wall Street Journal Magazine's 2017 Architecture Innovator of the Year Award. Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller are fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and are International Fellows at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
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Published on: June 13, 2019
Cite: "The High Line opens its last section, the Spur" METALOCUS. Accessed
<https://www.metalocus.es/en/news/high-line-opens-its-last-section-spur> ISSN 1139-6415
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