The High Line

The IAC building’s eastern slope is a stone’s throw from the High Line, the park taking shape atop 1.45 miles of disused elevated railway along Manhattan’s western edge. Set in motion by a pair of neighborhood activists—Robert Hammond and Joshua David, founders of the nonprofit Friends of the High Line (FHL)—and designed by Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, it is already attracting buildings by the likes of Jean Nouvel, Renzo Piano, Shigeru Ban, and Robert A. M. Stern—as well as some predictable grumbling about luxury condos marring the semi-industrial streetscape. But according to Hammond and David, the neighborhood’s rezoning was a certainty before the High Line even got off the ground, and the park’s prominence has simply encouraged a higher standard of design. “It’s sort of a wonderful problem to have, that people want to be near it,” Hammond says.

Of the 30 or so new or planned buildings along what one developer has dubbed Architects’ Row, the IAC headquarters, a modest nine stories, is far from the largest. Neither is it the nearest physically to the High Line—that perhaps dubious honor goes to the Standard, a hotel designed by Polshek Partnership and developed by Andre Balazs, which is to hover 30 feet above the tracks on concrete legs.

But the park probably has no bet­ter neighbor than IAC. Barry Diller and his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, whose studio has long been based nearby, were early supporters of the High Line. Their gift of $5 million, announced last spring by Mayor Michael Bloomberg at the park’s groundbreaking, is the largest FHL has received to date. IAC has also invested in the park. “Once we made a commitment to move into the neighborhood, we were adopting the neighborhood,” says IAC’s chief administrative officer, Jason Stewart, who sits on the FHL board. The inaugural event in the IAC lobby was a benefit luncheon for the nonprofit, and an exhibition unveiling the park’s final design—in advance of the first section’s opening in 2008—will be held there as well. “The High Line is part of the story that is Chelsea, that made the far West Side really interesting to us,” Stewart says.

More on the Inter­ActiveCorp (IAC) headquarters:
Diller, Gehry, and the Glass Schooner on 18th Street
Model Timeline
Media Wall
Product Innovation
The Boardroom
Floor Graphics
AskCity