Tackling the Low Line?

New York’s High Line city park (see our report) is continuing to inspire inventive new ideas regarding adding more greenery into the urban landscape. The newest, and possibly one of the most ingenious to date, is the Delancey subterranean park.

Proposed by NY-based Raad architects, the aim is to develop roughly two acres of a vast and dank trolley terminal that’s been left languishing, unused, underneath the Lower East Side for six decades – and turn it into a lush underground park.

Key to the plans are sunlight-filtering skylights that will keep out potentially harmful ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths, while allowing enough light for plant photosynthesis. The plan would call for dozens of lamppost-like solar collectors above ground on Delancey Street, feeding the system below.

As yet, the group still needs final permissions from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which currently controls the unused terminal, as well as the local community board to make their revolutionary designs a reality. Watch this space for details on its development.

Raad Studio

MTA