Cooper alumni Elizabeth Diller AR’79 and Ricardo Scofidio AR’55 are two of the principal architects behind the High Line, one of the most celebrated New York landmarks of the last 20 years. Originally an industrial rail line that ran from 14th to 34th streets beginning in the 1930s, the elevated track of this structure had been largely abandoned to nature by the 1980s. The organization “Friends of the High Line” joined forces with the City of New York to select a design team to revive and reclaim the space, and in 2004 a Steering Committee of representatives from both groups selected the team of James Corner Field Operations, Piet Oudolf , and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Diller and Scofidio, already well-known for their inventive and environmentally-sensitive designs, set out to create multiple eco-systems that respected the park’s past as both an industrial site and a natural one. Lines of precast concrete reminiscent of the rail lines that once ran here transform into walkways, which at points are subsumed by gardens of local flora. The architects describe their design as one that “addresses a multitude of civic issues: reclamation of unclaimed public space, adaptive reuse of outmoded infrastructure, and preservation as a strategy for sustainability. The park accommodates the wild, the cultivated, the intimate, and the social.”