With Balmori Associates, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, and studio MDA

 
 

Team Statement

The redevelopment of the High Line demands multidisciplinary teamwork at the highest levels of creativity and design experience. The team established by Zaha Hadid Architects, Balmori Associates, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP and studioMDA meets this call, linking together these world-class offices with substantial building experience into a networked studio for excellence in urban design. Each of these offices is renowned for well-defined strengths and specializations, and yet together they have discovered a common language and approach in responding to the spatial and temporal challenges underlying the project. The creative adaptation and reuse of old structures typically requires that we suspend our preconceptions of their uses and qualities, and one of the best ways of opening our thinking to new possibilities occurs through the thoughtful process of graphic abstraction for which Zaha Hadid's office is famous. The team has discovered a natural synergy in this approach, for it enables open discussion of a complex range of issues and details long before one decides on specific uses and placements.


When The High Line is redeveloped, it will bring an exciting range of new spaces into play for New Yorkers. The team recognizes that the qualities of movement through these spaces will define the potentials of The High Line, and that understanding these must be the primary outcome of the design work. Before new stakeholders can be assembled, before management challenges can be fully identified and addressed, and before a program of uses can be accommodated through detailed design, our clients will want the richest possible understanding of The High Line's future. It is the creative and multidisciplinary approach to drawing and modelling that enables this understanding to emerge within the team's work. If selected, the ongoing daily communication through the team's network will be punctuated by bi-weekly intensive charrettes in New York, with a two-month collective studio overlaid onto this ongoing process. The principal offices have defined an environment for design and investigation that will involve both the wider team exploring technical, environmental, and cultural issues, as well as the stakeholders of this development process.

Team List

Zaha Hadid Architects, Team Lead, Architecture
Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher
Tiago Correia
Ana Cajiao
Lawrence Barth
Daniel Baerlecken
Alvin Huang
Marc Fornes

Balmori Associates, Landscape Architecture
Diana Balmori
Mark Thomann
Emily Abruzzo
Mei Wu

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, Architecture
Marilyn Jordan Taylor
Anthony Vacchione
Derek Moore
Earl Jackson
Erik Boehlo

studioMDA, Architecture
Markus Dochantschi

The Kitchen, Cultural Advisor
Elise Bernhardt

Creative Time, Cultural Advisor
Anne Pasternak
Peter Eleey

Public Art Fund, Cultural Advisor

Arup, Engineering
Mahadev Raman (Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing)
Charles Sawyer (Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing)
Markus Schulte (Structure)
Neill Woodger (Acoustics and Audio Visual)
Albert Palumbo (Security)
Fiona Cousins (Sustainability Specialist)
Transportation Engineer (Andrew Wisdom)
Ashraf Taha (Geotechnical Engineering)

Halie Light & L'Observatoire International, Lighting Design
Herve Descottes
Nathalie Rozot, consultant

Iros Elevator, Design Elevator Consultant

Environmental Risk and Loss Control, Inc., Hazardous Material Testing
William Dailey, Building Code Expeditor

Langan Engineering & Environmental Services, Civil Engineering

Davis Langdon Adams, Cost Consultant
Ethan Burrows
Raymond Bott

Pentagram, Graphic Design
Paula Scher

BCA - Historic Preservation, Historic Preservation
Ray Pepi

Ducibella, Venter & Santore, Special Security
Bob Ducibella

ETM Associates, Park Operations
Tim Marshall