We've got to get back to the garden

New York City was blessed this Easter weekend with the kind of weather we always hope we'll have on Memorial Day and so often don't. Having found Universal Force unexpectedly closed in observance of Good Friday, My Naam yoga buddy Elise and I decided to take the opportunity to pay a first-time-this-year visit to the High Line. I don't know who first conceived of reclaiming this abandoned elevated railroad built in the 1930s and turning it into a mile-long promenade but it was sparked by genius. Our trip got me thinking about agri-tecture which means combining organic and industrial building materials. There is something so poignant about the way nature will reimpose itself on a post-industrial landscape and the High Line underscores the wild beauty found in any similarly abandoned urban area.

Later, I checked out the website of architecture firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro which had this to say about the project.

The master plan for The High Line, an elevated railroad spur stretching 1.45 miles along Manhattan’s Westside, is inspired by the melancholic, unruly beauty of the ruin today where nature has reclaimed a once vital piece of urban infrastructure, The team retools this industrial conveyance into a postindustrial instrument of leisure reflection about the very categories of "nature" and "culture" in our time. By changing the rules of engagement between plant life and pedestrians, the strategy of agri-tecture combines organic and building materials into a blend of changing proportions that accommodate the wild, the cultivated, the intimate, and the hyper-social. The park is marked by slowness, distraction and an other-worldliness that preserves the character of The High Line.