Essay Space

CW: Suicide, death of a teen

In 2010, Julijonas Urbonas designed a roller coaster to kill people.

Literally. The design was a set of tightly increasing loops, getting smaller and smaller, until the centrifugal force would make you pass out from oxygen deprivation, and then die. They called it the euthanasia coaster with suggested uses in death penalty subjects or medically assisted death. While its theoretical design is its own art piece, the idea of a ride designed to, as said by Urbonas, "with elegance and euphoria – take the life of a human being" feels oppositional to what a roller coaster should stand for. Roller coasters are meant to be an amusement ride- something to be enjoyed by a community and bring people together, and building a coaster for this purpose goes against everything it should theoretically stand for. It was explicitly and knowingly designed for death.

Let's talk about the Hudson Yard Vessel.

Built in 2019 in New York's Hudson Yard, the Vessel is a 150 tall 2,500 step community interactive art piece. It was funded by a New York real estate firm to enrich the area and give everyone a structure to admire and interact with by climbing its many stairs. Also, four people have committed suicide on it.

I don't want to go too into detail, but after the first three suicides, they shut everything down. Then they reopened with a rule that you had to be in a group of three to climb, and posted guards. This didn't work either, and a 14 year old visiting with his family jumped. They shut it down indefinitely, before reopening with a mesh netting. They also, crucially, only allow guests to climb to the seventh floor.

Here's the part I can't stop thinking about: Everyone who built the vessel, knew people were going to try to kill themselves on it. The designer, Thomas Heatherwick, was warned multiple times, but the multi-millionaire refused to have his vision altered.

Okay, so why was it built then if this was a completely predictable outcome? What should've been fun public infrastructure for people to admire and visit is now a gravesite, a vessel wanting to be filled. The answer? Pride. The artist would not "ruin his vision". The vessel was about his own abilities and designs, not about the people he was ostensibly being paid to build it for. I can't look at it without getting a sick hollow feeling in my stomach. A vessel must be filled, an artist must prove his design is the best, that he knows better than the people he's designing it for. Where do the stairs go? Nowhere.

It is incredibly fitting that this piece was finished in 2019, when hubris caused the covid 19 pandemic to kill far more than it should have so that the wealthy could eke out a bit more profit, could make their numbers a bit bigger, could prove that their vision was the best, damn the people that actually live in the world they're building.

The Vessel is form and function clashing. You can't even access the higher floors anymore. By refusing to be a structure for suicide it also fails to be a community space- to be fully experienced by guests- its vision muzzled by mesh and glass and guards and a limit on how high you can climb, Heatherwick's vision now hampered at every turn with reminders of what they're trying to prevent. It has become impossible to interpret the Vessel as a work of art without acknowledging death. You cannot ignore the guards and the grate and the limit to how high you can really climb the limitless staircase to nowhere. Its walls now tell a story about hubris, pride, and an inability to acknowledge the people who you are creating your art for.

The function of a system is its result and by limiting people's ability to hurt themselves on it, it is also limited in its initial dreams as an art piece. This was a design phase problem. If your machine can not fulfill its purpose to the fullest extent without killing people, it never should've been built in the first place. An absolute failure of architecture on every level. What a waste.