The ship at Hudson Yards in New York reopens with a safety net 3 years after a spate of suicides. But is it better?

CNN
—

Editor’s note: If you or a loved one has considered suicide, please call this number National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or text TALK to 741741. International Association for Suicide Prevention AND Friends all over the world also provides contact details for crisis centers around the world.

The massive honeycomb structure known as the Vessel at New York’s Hudson Yards reopened on Monday with newly installed safety netting more than three years after wave of suicides led to its shameful closure.

The reopening marks a new attempt to make the climbable, 50-foot-tall structure an Instagrammable centerpiece of Hudson Yards, the largest development in Manhattan since Rockefeller Center. However, the addition of the safety net means that the facility opened in March 2019 with serious flaws and that early warning about low barriers and lack of net were ignored.

“We were able to come up with a solution that I think balances all the aesthetic considerations of making sure people can see and also ensures the safety of all customers coming in,” said Andrew Rosen, chief operating officer of Hudson Yards, according to WABC, a CNN affiliate.

Heatherwick Studio, which designed the ship, said it was “pleased” that the facility had reopened.

“We hope it will continue to deliver the experience we originally envisioned – as a unique place to explore and a one-of-a-kind look at New York City,” a studio spokesperson said in an email.

Two architecture critics told CNN the mesh appears to solve functional safety concerns for people jumping. But they say the Vessel remains gaudy and clunky.

“It adds gracelessness to what was already a kind of graceless and off-putting structure,” said Jacob Alspector, founder of Alspector Architecture and associate professor at the Spitzer School of Architecture. “I think they’ll get it right, get the people who pay to come and take a look at it, but I don’t think it’ll be any improvement. Actually, it goes the other way.”

Matt Shaw, architecture critic who edited Prescient 2016 article in the Architect’s Gazette Warning about the ship’s safety problems, he told CNN that the project was poorly planned from the beginning.

“(The ship) is a permanent reminder of A, the absurd way this thing was conceived, and B, people died here,” he said.

A shiny copper colored tourist attraction – owned by an affiliated real estate company billionaire Stephen M. Ross – consists of a series of staircases and offers a 360-degree view of the surrounding area.

Early critics warned the structure’s low railings and lack of netting would allow for suicide attempts. These warnings turned out to be tragically accurate.

After three suicides, the Ship closed for several months in January 2021 and reopened with new safety measures, including increased security, a buddy system and signs about mental health resources. However, following the suicide of a 14-year-old boy in July 2021, the ship’s stairwells were destroyed. closed for over three years.

Heatherwick Studio said it was looking for a design solution that would provide an appropriate level of safety but would not compromise the shape and functionality of the ship. The studio designed a tailor-made solution as part of a broader set of security measures.

CNN, based at Hudson Yards, went to the ship on Wednesday to investigate the changes. The honeycomb structure sits in the middle of the block, surrounded by a high-end shopping center to the east, The Shed mobile arts center to the south, the train station and the Hudson River to the west, and a small park and Equinox rooftop swimming pool to the north.

There is a $10 entry fee to board the ship. After passing the required ticket and security check, we entered the ground floor of the building to look at the stair trellis and shiny brass. About five workers were stationed around the facility to keep an eye on the crowd, mostly tourists, taking photos and climbing higher.

On the third level, the mesh blocked the exterior of the structure, and on the fourth level, the mesh blocked the interior. Parts of the ship were inaccessible due to newly installed gates and netting, and the accessible area narrowed as we climbed. On the seventh level (of eight total), visitors can only access one platform on the south side, with a somewhat obstructed view of the Manhattan skyline. The top level is unavailable.

Walking through the ship is an unsettling experience: cold and maze-like, yet exciting and tense. After hiking up and down 154 floors, our legs were slightly shaking and our hearts were pounding in our chests.

Alspector previously criticized Vessel as “MC Escher’s nightmare”, referring to the famous a graphic designer known for his stairs to nowhere. He has not visited the ship since it reopened, but said photos and videos of the netting made it look “like a cage, like a prison.”

He noticed that the hexagonal shape of the grid refers to the shape of the stairs. Still, it looks like a mesh, and its presence may make visitors wonder why it’s there in the first place.

“It’s definitely a bespoke design, but it doesn’t transform the space or structure into something positive,” Alspector said.

According to Shaw, the mesh doesn’t solve the ship’s fundamental problem – the structure serves no real purpose, he says. Balancing aesthetic ambition and functional utility is a common tension in urban design. He said that a honeycomb structure with endless stairs leading to nowhere is insufficient in both cases.

In his opinion, the source of the problem can be found in the creation process. According to him, the design of the structure was like this Agreement behind closed doors, without the feedback of the community that makes public spaces better.

“It has no connection to what people really need,” Shaw said. “This thing really is a monument to a guy who has too much money, and they just got it wrong.”