Vessel, designed by Thomas Heatherwick and Heatherwick Studio, is an imposing honeycomb whose 154 interconnecting flights of stairs and 80 landings lured tourists attracted by the physical challenge and the views of New York City and the Hudson River.
Just a week after the opening of Thomas Heatherwick’s Little Island, a floating park on the Hudson River, which has quickly become a crowd favourite among cooped up New Yorkers, the British designer’s Vessel has reopened.
The spiralling, climbable public sculpture closed to the public in January after a 21-year-old man jumped from one of its platforms. When it reopens on Friday, new rules will require visitors to come in pairs or groups and buy a $10 ticket at most times, which will help pay for triple the security. The tickets will also include a message from Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation, which offers mental health support, telling visitors that “each of you matter to us, and to so many others”.
But Related Companies, the developer of which commissioned Vessel as a centrepiece of the $25 billion Hudson Yards development on Manhattan’s West Side, says it will not make the barriers on its platforms any higher.
“I understand that the Vessel is seen as a work of art and architecture, and there’s a certain aesthetic involved with that,” Lowell Kern, the community board chairman told the New York Times. “But you’re trying to balance an artistic aesthetic versus loss of life, and there’s no choice there.”