"The artist's imagination is a world of potentialities that no single work will successfully enact; what we experience as we live is a different world, which answers to other forms of order and disorder; the layers of words that accumulate on pages like layers of color on canvas are yet another world, infinite too but more manageable, less resistant to forms."
Italo Calvino, Visibility
THE LINE
Built in the late 19th and early 20th century, the rail line cuts through multiple Brooklyn neighborhoods, and for much of the 20th century the rail line was busy serving industries in Central Brooklyn and Queens. In the past 50 years that activity has been much reduced, and a new proposal by the New York Regional Planning Association has emerged to revitalize the line by combining freight and transit systems. This proposal is currently part of a feasibility study being conducted by the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority. RAIL has taken this scenario as a starting point to create architectural explorations of the opportunities inherent in the railroad and its surrounding communities.
THE TRIBORO LINE
Map by the NY Regional Planning Association
MTA FEASIBILITY STUDY
Map by the NY Metropolitan Transit Authority
ANALYSIS
The analyses of the line from a variety of perspectives lead to the selection of the different sites for the individual interventions. The selection resulted from mapping exercises; site visits; previous history of working within a community; sustainable topical interests; living along the line and as part of a commuting experience.
