Update: We Love The Lowline, and So Does Everybody Else

Last June Garden Collage ran a story about a forthcoming underground park that developers had begun to design in an abandoned trolley terminal in New York City– a project that is known as the Lowline. NYC Has The Highline, And Soon It Will Get a Lowline explored what was then a radical new idea: Dan Barasch and James Ramsey were going to install a park the size of a football field in an underground trolley terminal that was abandoned in 1948. Once fully initiated, the duo’s planned renovations would result in an underground garden that can thrive even in the winter– the first garden of its kind in the world.

Now, New York Magazine has named the Lowline one of its top “Reasons to Love New York”, as plans for the unprecedented subterranean park continue to move forward. Over 15,000 people from all over the world have visited the Lowline’s research lab and proposal site thus far, and interest in the project is only projected to grow.

Celebrating the Lowline Lab from The Lowline on Vimeo.

“Right now, architects design tall buildings to absorb the maximum daylight, which usually means coating them with glass. But if future versions of the Lowline sun-catchers became compact and cheap enough, they could make subterranean New York more habitable, redeem dreary homes, and funnel sunshine into the fattest skyscrapers, improving cubicle and mailroom days immeasurably. Part of the installation’s charm is that you experience only a brief Huh? moment before the whole thing seems perfectly, well, natural,” writes NY Mag’s Justin Davidson.

“After all, anyone who’s ever watered a spider plant in a dark New York apartment has some indoor survivalist skills, and we have all accustomed ourselves to indoor burrowing out of simple necessity. The Lowline asks us to take the next step and descend below ground for pleasure, simply because it’s nice down there.”

Read New York Magazine‘s full update on the Lowline here.