NYC’s Highline is a defunct elevated train line that runs through a swath of Manhattan’s LES (or Lower East Side to us outsiders). Spanning from Hell’s Kitchen on through West Chelsea and into the Gansevoort Market Historic District, it has been reborn as a park. Yes, a park. Though this news is old to New Yorkers, it has caught the eye of architecture fans due to its unique status and world-class, big city location.

While this idea seemed novel when I first read about it, it also seemed too good to be true, as in it’ll never get built. Fact, on the other hand, has it quite the opposite. It indeed got funded and with some visionary design and planning, it is miraculously under construction. Brilliant, progressive ideas like this so rarely come to fruition.

Seeing the first sets of initial proposals from architectural firms to the final rendering got my imagination and senses going. Designed by Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, it’s a transcendent exercise in how reuse, urban planning and greening can go wildly right. An interesting sidebar is the development of André Balzac’s Standard Hotel rising over it. Part of the design will call for the hotel to act as a bridge, allowing a section of it to run over the uninterrupted park. Should be a landmark event when it launches. I will be making a focused effort to see it in person as soon as I can after it opens.