News
August 06, 2012
Our Kolb-Berglund Fellow Reports From the Field...
Jessica Zarowitz is a third-year MLA student at the University of Texas at Austin and was awarded the 2012 Kolb-Berglund Traveling Fellowship from the Dallas Center for Architecture. The fellowship is helping to fund travel for her research. The first leg is done and she sends this report (and these photos)...
The Dallas Center for Architecture awarded me a scholarship to contrast and compare three abandoned railroad lines turned into parks: the Promenade Plantée in Paris, the High Line in New York City and the Reading Viaduct in Philadelphia! So far this summer, I've visited the two east coast projects. In June, I traveled to New York (my home state) and to then to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia I met with designers from Studio Bryan Hanes, the firm currently working on the design development of “the Spur” section of the Reading Viaduct. The design process began in 2001, a result of a grassroots community effort similar to that of the High Line, and will be moving into the construction document phase later this year.
Today, the Paris and New York City projects have become archetypes for how to rethink antiquated, unused infrastructure and be successful in their adaptive reuse. These new parks have positively impacted their surrounding neighborhoods through increased real estate development and outdoor urban recreation, and have become catalysts for other parkway and elevated rail development proposals like Philadelphia’s Reading Viaduct, the Beltline in Atlanta, and the Bloomingdale Trail in Chicago.
Stay tuned for images from my trip to Paris this August!!