Two new Chelsea galleries are popping up underneath the High Line in New York City as part of a multi-artspace build-out by Related Companies, developer of Zaha Hadid Architect (ZHA)’s 520 West 28th Street. Designed by New-York based studioMDA, the new flagship for Paul Kasmin and the High Line Nine galleries broaden the art and architectural appeal of the adjacent elevated park.
For Kasmin’s fourth show space in the neighborhood, Markus Dochantschi, founder of studioMDA and former architect at ZHA, envisioned a column-free, 3,000-square-foot gallery with a boxy, angled exterior featuring white concrete and a subtle wood texture. Inside, large-scale sculptures can fit smoothly in between the 22-foot-high walls and below a coffered ceiling with 28 individual skylights that diffuse natural light into the space below. This super-waffle grid also creates a pattern for the building’s rooftop sculpture garden, with a landscape designed by Future Green Studio. Visible from the High Line, it has an undulating form that allows plants to be set deep within the soil.
Dochantschi and studioMDA also created the multi-tenant High Line Nine gallery next door, the face of which provides a stark contrast to the bright, inviting Kasmin gallery. Sporting a brutalist-inspired, curved facade cast in white bronze, the building is situated directly underneath the rail park and stretches in arcade form from 27th to 28th Streets via a central corridor. Each tenant within the High Line Nine will receive a space ranging from 650 square feet to 1,800 square feet accessible via the core passageway.
The elongated facility will take on an industrial feel thanks to the exposed High Line columns and steel beams connected to the structure above. At the end of the High Line Nine, there will be a café and wine bar called il Piccolo Ristoro. So far, Leila Heller Gallery, Valli Art Gallery, Polich Tallix, Hollis Taggart Gallery, ZieherSmith, and Burning In Water as well as the adjacent Kasmin have signed on as part of the group.