What the world's first underground park will look like and why New York needs it

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Modern architecture is incredibly daring and ambitious projects. One of these - a real underground park on the site of the former tram depot - was told by a blogger and programmer from New York. Lifehacker publishes the article with the permission of the author.

Much has been said and written about New York's High Line, a park laid out on an abandoned railway overpass. But urbanists decided not to stop there and now propose to arrange the Lowline Park () in one of the old underground depots of the city.

This venture has many problems that do not arise in the case of an outdoor park. How can green space exist without sunlight? To answer this question, activists built a demo of the project in a warehouse in lower Manhattan. And so they arranged an open day for the residents of the city. I went to see it and now I will tell you about this idea.

New York's public transportation system is one of the oldest in the world. There are many inactive tunnels and abandoned stations. Now all this is idle, but there are those who want to transform these spaces into public places. The successful High Line model serves as an example: urbanists managed to build a modern park, thereby transforming the depressed area of western Manhattan into an area of high-end and high-value housing.

Lowline project activists want to do the same on the Lower East Side, only because there is no unnecessary overpass, they propose to arrange a park in the underground room of an abandoned tram depot. As you know, all trams in New York were cut down a long time ago, and now this room looks like this:

What the world's first underground park will look like: an abandoned tram depot

This underground wasteland occupies an area of three blocks, which is the approximate size of a football field. The height of the ceilings here is six meters. This is how the guys from Lowline imagine this park:

This is how the guys from Lowline imagine an underground park

The main problem for them is how to make plants grow in this dungeon? In order to solve it, the designers proposed a complex system for transmitting sunlight. To test this idea, they raised a lot of money through Kikstarter, rented a large warehouse near the very same depot and installed a full-fledged fragment of this system there. The photo shows that the shape of the room is very similar to a tram dungeon.

What an underground park will look like: a demo in a warehouse

On February 22nd I saw this miracle. New Yorkers love this kind of urban storyline, so there was a huge queue at the demo space all day. It curled around the entire block, but luckily it moved very quickly. We defended it in 15 minutes.

The entrance to the premises is equipped with turnstiles similar to those in the New York subway. Very clever. Despite the fact that the premises are at ground level, the local residents immediately get the impression that they are in the subway. Inside, crowds of people march around the central part of this warehouse, where a prototype ceiling has been installed and greenery is growing.

What the underground park will look like: a prototype ceiling is installed in the central part of the warehouse and greenery is growing

These plants receive only sunlight directed from the outside by a cunning system of lenses and mirrors. The experiment will continue for several months. The team needs to prove that representatives of the flora are able to survive in such conditions.

What the underground park will look like: inside the light is transmitted by a system of mirrors

There are large mirrors on the roof of the building. They direct sunlight into special collectors that focus it and send it down into the room.

Inside, the light is transmitted by a system of mirrors. They fit in transparent plastic tubes. Not so that the light does not "leak", but so that excess dust does not get into the system, which would reduce the efficiency of the mirrors.

As a result, light rays come out of special holes in the ceiling. See how bright the light is? This is despite the fact that it is cloudy outside all day now.

They say that on clear days the light from these things is too intense. Therefore, at the very top, there are reflector discs that reflect the light back into the ceiling. And the ceiling itself is made of matte panels that can diffuse light throughout the room.

The result is impressive. In the center of the room it is quite light even in cloudy weather.

What the world's first underground park will look like: ceiling

Since there is only a small prototype, its light is not enough for the entire huge hall, and there are ordinary electric spotlights around the edges so that people can see better.

The vegetation, placed under the curved ceiling, is planted on artificial hills made from plywood sheets. Greenery also hangs from the ceiling. In general, this small space is somewhat like a jungle.

What the world's first underground park will look like: artificial hills

What will happen next? One of the purposes of the demonstration is to assess the degree of interest this project will arouse among the residents of the district and the entire city. And the long lines hint that this will be okay.

Lowline activists are currently in talks with the MTA, the public transport agency that owns the underground space it plans to transform. The MTA is also likely monitoring the success of the installation, which can be seen over the next few months.

The underground park will begin to build no earlier than 2020

According to the most optimistic forecasts, the active phase of construction may begin no earlier than 2020, so all of us will have to wait a bit.

But if this project does come to fruition, it will be incredibly cool. Personally, Lowline reminded me of some of the elements of the fantastic gardens of the future in Singapore. It will be great if something similar appears in New York.