James Corner is a Landscape Architect and theorist with numerous works to his credit which explore the contemporary

meaning of architectural landscaping, with a focus on "developing innovative approaches toward landscape architectural design and urbanism." His designs of note include Fresh Kills Park on Staten Island and the High Line in Manhattan, both in New York City. Corner is a professionally registered landscape architect and the principal of James Corner Field Operations, a landscape architecture and urban design practice based in New York City and Philadelphia.

JAMES CORNER

Corner's designs bring back the open spaces of the natural wild with a rough, natural, and ecologically sound approach; this could be compared to the works of Frederick Law Olmsted, except more unbridled. The High Line is a 1.5-mile (2.4 km)-long stretch of abandoned railroad viaduct that runs from the Meatpacking district to Hell's Kitchen. The proposed design by Field Operations is meant to transform it into a 1.5-mile (2.4 km)-long park. Corner envisioned "fantastic, mixed perennial landscape" interspersed by "event spaces." Since its completion,it has made an impact on the surrounding blocks with the addition of 27 new residential towers, hotels, offices, and museums. Corner's Field Operations headed up a team that won the international design competition with its "Lifescape" design for the redesign of Fresh Kills Park, a project intended to salvage a massive landfill on Staten Island. The landfill is the largest in the country at 2,200 acres (8.9 km2), or three times the size of Central Park in Manhattan. Today, it is one of the largest publics work projects in the world. The winning design incorporates a World Trade Center memorial, because the landfill was temporarily reopened to accommodate the remains of the towers, as well as a strong, central focus on programs, habitat, and circulation throughout the new park.

FAMOUS WORKS

The High Line is a public park built on an historic freight rail line elevated above the streets on Manhattans West Side. It is owned by the City of New York, and maintained and operated by Friends of the High Line. Founded in 1999 by community residents, Friends of the High Line fought for the High Lines preservation and transformation at a time when the historic structure was under the threat of demolition. The High Line was built in the 1930s, as part of a massive public-private infrastructure project called the West Side Improvement. It lifted freight traffic 30 feet in the air, removing dangerous trains from the streets of Manhattan's largest industrial district. No trains have run on the High Line since 1980.

THE HIGH LINE, NEW YORK

Antoni Gaud i Cornet (Catalan pronunciation: [ntni wi]; 25 June 185210 June 1926) was a Spanish Catalan architect and figurehead of Catalan Modernism. Gaud's works reflect his highly individual and distinctive style and are largely concentrated in the Catalan capital of Barcelona, notably his magnum opus, the Sagrada Famlia. Much of Gaud's work was marked by his four life passions: architecture, nature, religion and love for Catalonia.[3] Gaud studied every detail of his creations, integrating into his architecture a series of crafts in which he was skilled: ceramics, stained glass, wrought ironwork forging and carpentry. He introduced new techniques in the treatment of materials, such as trencads, made of waste ceramic pieces.

ANTONI GAUDI

FAMOUS WORKS

PARK GUELL, BARCELONA

Park Gell (Catalan: Parc Gell [par we]) is a garden complex with architectural elements situated on the hill of El Carmel in the Grcia district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It was designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaud and built in the years 1900 to 1914. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Works of Antoni Gaud".

PARK GUELL, BARCELONA

The focal point of the park is the main terrace, surrounded by a long bench in the form of a sea serpent. To design the curvature of the bench surface Gaud used the shape of buttocks left by a naked workman sitting in wet clay Roadways around the park to service the intended houses were designed by Gaud as structures jutting out from the steep hillside or running on viaducts, with separate footpaths in arcades formed under these structures. This minimized the intrusion of the roads, and Gaud designed them using local stone in a way that integrates them closely into the landscape. His structures echo natural forms, with columns like tree trunks supporting branching vaulting under the roadway, and the curves of vaulting and alignment of sloping columns designed in a similar way to his Church of Colnia Gell so that the inverted catenary arch shapes form perfect compression structures.

PARK GUELL, BARCELONA

The centrepiece is the intended covered market, a majestic forest of fluted columns. Its roof forms a vast terrace with a view of the city. It's surrounded by an undulating continuous bench, the back of which forms a balustrade, its entire surface encrusted with ceramic shards of all colours, some randomly arranged, some in patterns. The seat is unusually comfortable for a stone bench: Gaudi had a workman drop his pants and sit in soft plaster to record the correct anatomical curve - foreshadowing the science of ergonomics by half a century.

PARK GUELL, BARCELONA