Oz

Volume 35 Article 13

1-1-2013

In Praise of Getting Lost: Sven Hedin and the Lowline

James Ramsey

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Recommended Citation Ramsey, James (2013) "In Praise of Getting Lost: Sven Hedin and the Lowline," Oz: Vol. 35. https://doi.org/ 10.4148/2378-5853.1522

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Oz by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. In Praise of Getting Lost Sven Hedin and the Lowline

James Ramsey

The Explorer Desperate, the three surviving mem- bers of the expedition had resorted to dragging themselves along on their hands and knees. The others had been left behind four days ago. Vul- tures that had been on the remains of their camels wheeled overhead in anticipation. Leaving his last two exhausted companions behind, the explorer Sven Hedin pushed on alone, resolving to return should he, against all odds, find water. At last, he reached the dry riverbed of the Khotan-daria, the fabled stream that briefly flowed each year out of the Tibetan glacier fields through the desert. Making his way painfully across the broad riverbed he sud- denly stood on the edge of a tiny pool, black as ink in the moonlight. It was one of those rare places, separated by a day’s journey or more, where water collected and remained in hollows year round, and Hedin drank deeply from the crystal-clear pool.

Hedin had survived the infamous Taklamakan Desert. Emerging at last in a Chinese garrison town on May 9, 1902, he brought with him the notes compiled from that expedition and thus laid the foundation for a precise mapping of Central Asia, one of the last remaining “white spaces” on the globe.

Sven Hedin’s celebrated expedition into Central Asia was a moment that marked the end of an age. The wild, rumored spaces beyond our maps were swiftly being brought into focus 74 and catalogued. It was a period of 75 Old Williamsburg Trolley Terminal Abandonded Williamsburg Trolley Terminal space

incredible informational growth. The The Secret City the WTT served as a transit hub for ing and experimenting with various fantasies surrounding the “lost cities” Built in 1908, a vast underground trol- this incredibly dense and busy set- methods of solar irrigation for several of the vast interior of the Asian con- ley terminal exists beneath Delancey ting, with its prime location at the years. Applying these techniques to tinent and the mysteries of “darkest Street on New York’s . foot of the and the old Williamsburg Trolley Termi- Africa” passed into documented fact, Just around the time Sven Hedin was as a connection to four subway lines. nal is the basis for its transformation leaving only romanticized echoes of working to narrow the world, teams But as time went on, the neighbor- into the Lowline. an earlier, more untamed time. of mules and strong-backed Irishmen hood was by turns razed, reimagined, toiled away in . One of re-settled, and bit by bit, the vibrancy The concept of taking sunlight and A hundred years later, in our current the greatest urban explosions in his- of this crossroads was lost and the having it travel to another location age, a similar process is underway. In tory was underway; entire neighbor- WTT forgotten. is not a new one. From the polished 2003 someone clicked a mouse, and hoods were being built, and alongside stone shafts of old Egypt, to the deep- Maps was born. Google Maps, them, the great bridges and little- Much time has passed since the ened windows of your average town- along with services like Yelp, Thrillist, known tunnels that served them. troubled period of the latter half of house, to more modern exotica, such and countless others, have sharpened the twentieth century, and many of as Solartubes or tracking heliostats, the “resolution” of the information That tunnel on still the urban scars the neighborhood creating mechanisms to enjoy natural on our maps exponentially. And not remains intact, passed over un- has borne have healed. Vitality and light where it would otherwise not be, only that—access to these infinite noticed by New Yorkers during all life have returned to the Lower East has been a very natural design urge catalogs is at hand, just sitting in all the frenetic intervening decades. Side. It has reclaimed its cultural since the inception of architecture. of our pockets on our phones. The mere suggestion that it exists birthright, and in the process has is enough to signal that there is still become a central driver of commerce. The Lowline represents a new ap- In this revolution, something funny more to the city that we have not yet The Lowline reimagines that heritage proach toward achieving this goal. has happened. While Sven Hedin discovered. The thought that New to bring a forgotten relic back to life. In order to bring sunlight down into and the explorers of his age may have York City, for all its upward mobility, the underground space, we make use completed the mapping of the world for all the gentrification, might still An overt reference to the , of technology that has only recently by filling in the “terrae incognitae,” contain secrets and mysteries out of the name “Lowline” is a semiotic become available and that is being in this century, we have reached a sight and unmarked on our maps, is connection to the idea of urban further developed using the most new stage of human experience that both astounding and exciting. repurposing and rejuvenation. At recent advances in tracking and ma- touches each of us in our everyday its essence, the Lowline proposes terials, doing so in partnership with lives. For now we have not only lost Little known, this abandoned space to refresh and repurpose the Wil- the engineering firm Arup, the Cali- the ability to get lost, but we have has brooded silently beneath the liamsburg Trolley Terminal space by fornia Lighting Technology Center, also lost our ability to explore and bustle of ’s biggest street irrigating sunlight down into it, and and Professor Lorne Whitehead of discover for ourselves hidden places for over sixty years. Originally dubbed by doing so, to create an underground University of British Columbia. By in our own cities. In many ways, the the Williamsburg Trolley Terminal garden for the community and the concentrating sunlight above the advances of our age parallel the huge (WTT), the space sits at the literal city to explore. street level, channeling it through informational leap of a century ago, crossroads of one of New York’s old- the street, and then re-distributing though on a microscopic, personal est, most historic neighborhoods, the Using the Future to View the that light underground, we are able scale. The loss of the capacity to ex- Lower East Side, where generations Past to deliver the full visible spectrum plore and discover has created a deep, of immigrants who came to America My firm RAAD, which created and de- of sunlight with minimal impact to 76 unstated cultural longing. first made their home. A century ago, signed the Lowline, has been study- the street level. This effectively allows Diagrammatic sketch of the Lowline technological implementations

us to have skylights underground us to manipulate space, light, and emerge, operating as the functioning that is altogether new: magical, at without disturbing the incredible expectations. Our ability to deploy optical system to distribute the sun- times mysterious, at others halcyon, bustle of Delancey Street. technology as a means of designing light brought into the space. and all underground, perhaps per- both a historical and experiential versely beneath a tree with the J train Design effect is the philosophical heart of The design of the Lowline involves clattering by. As with all technologies, this one the design. not only the “discovery” for the visitor serves as a tool. The solar technolo- of the archeology of the space, but Some First Steps gies employed by the Lowline are not Much of the Lowline design has to do the actual modulation of the visitor To experiment with some of our tech- just simply solar devices; at some with one important concept: main- experience. Relative light levels, di- nological and design concepts, our level, they function collectively as taining the integrity of the historical rectional light, diffuse light, and how team created an exhibit in September a time machine—a device from our shell of the site while being very clear those are sequenced are all elements 2012 called “Imagining the Lowline.” future that allows us to travel from about the modern intervention. Par- that allow us to provide the visitor Set in a large warehouse space next the present into the past. In addition, alleled by vast swaths of greenery, a with a different type of experience. door to the actual Lowline, we cre- they constitute a tool that allows sort of liquid metal ceiling begins to Our aim is to create an encounter ated a full-scale “core sample” of the

77 Temporary exhibit

Lowline, complete with functioning technology and living plants. A timelapse Our experiments allowed us to calibrate the light levels and effects to carefully video of the one week construction of the exhibit can be seen at https://vimeo. tailor the visitor experience. Ultimately, our temporary exhibit brought over com/brandtgraves/lowlineinstall (Brandt Graves, RAAD) 11,000 visitors in five days of operation, outclassing most institutional museums in New York over that period. Some stared, some just poked their heads in, but A set of tracking solar collimators was installed ten feet above the roof. Sun- some even came with blankets to spend the day beside it. Did we end up achiev- light collected above the roof was redirected into the blacked-out warehouse ing what we set out to do? As the designer, it’s hard to say, of course, but what space, and then delivered via a system of optics to a thirty-foot by thirty-foot we certainly did do was generate curiosity, and for many, a sense of wonder. parabolic ceiling. Taking cues from telescope manufacturing techniques, our parabolic surface was cut from over 600 pieces of laser-cut anodized aluminum, Perhaps deliberately calling attention to our “lost” urban spaces by definition assembled as a mosaic on site on a motorized superstructure. destroys them. Did Sven Hedin know that his cartographic explorations would signify the death of exploration? It is hard to say, but if we can code curiosity, Below, on the ground, a living landscape was imposed onto the concrete floor or the delight of discovery, into the very DNA of design work, then maybe we of the warehouse. Given the site conditions and our design goals, we sought to begin to create spaces that beg intellectual exploration. Just maybe we can recreate the ecosystem of a forest under canopy. What emerged was an undulat- evoke for the visitor some of the cautious wonder and the magical experiences ing hill of moss, planted with ferns, mushrooms, and a shaped Japanese maple. of times past by weaving something completely new.

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