An ambitious plan for one of New York’s abandoned underground train stations could see it transformed from dank pit of despair into a futuristic fibre-optic lit playpark.
Who said that living underground had to be dark, depressing and filthy? Sure, that’s the prevailing trend in most classic science fiction, where it’s imagined that we’ll all be living in places that look like this.
That’s the trolley terminal below Delancey Street as it is right now; hardly an inspiring place to take the family for a Sunday picnic. But what if it looked less like the scene of a stabbing, and more like this?
That’s the vision that architect James Ramsey has for the space, transforming it from a subterranean waste of space — it’s 2 acres in total, a not insignificant amount of space in New York, even if it is underground. The project’s dubbed the “low line”, in reference to New York’s High Line park that’s already in operation. The plan calls for fibre optic lighting that’ll channel natural sunlight during the day and light up at night. Speaking to The New Yorker, Ramsey is quoted as saying that
We’re channeling sunlight the way they did in ancient Egyptian tombs, but in a supermodern way.”