“The idea was to create a ribbon in the middle of the canyon,” says Hervé Descottes, principal of L’Observatoire International, about the High Line project. His firm worked with the team leader, landscape architect James Corner Field Operations, architect Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and plant designer Piet Oudolf to convert an abandoned freight line on Manhattan’s far west side into the wildly popular 1½-mile-long elevated park, completed in stages between 2009 and 2014. New York has no restrictions on uplight, as many cities do, according to Descottes. But here the light sources—a combination of metal-halide lamps and LEDs for the first phases and all LEDs for later ones­—are hidden, directed downward, and placed low to the ground. “The approach makes the landscape appear to glow all by itself.”

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