Sydney Highline Receives Mixed Reviews
Announcement posted by DesignBuild Source 22 May 2012
The success of New York City’s landscape architecture retrofit ‘The Highline’ is renowned worldwide. The innovative plan – now reaching completion – to turn oneof the city’s formerly most industrial, and unused, infrastructure pieces into landscaped community spaces has been marked as a flagship green building initiative, setting the project apart as one of the world’s leading retrofit projects.
However, while the Highline is definitely the first of its kind on such a scale, it may not be the last. New plans have been released by urban design firm Habitation for a Highline of sorts to be located on Sydney’s unsuccessful monorail.
Dubbed the ‘Highlane’ the concept would see the to-be-demolished Sydney monorail transformed instead into a 3.6 km public walkway through the centre of the city. Plans include the development of cycling space and garden spaces in addition to pocket parks, cafes and gallery spaces. The work would be completed with the incorporation of sustainable materials such as recycled timber.
Design firm director David Vago notes that this is the perfect solution in order to both save money and strengthen Sydney’s green reputation.
“From a sustainability point of view it makes sense to reuse not to remove,” says Vargo....