Vessel to Reopen with Safety Netting

The fanfare that accompanied the opening of the Vessel on March 15, 2019, was loud but ultimately short-lived. Before the end of the year, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York ordered Related to make more of the sculpture's 80 landings accessible, deeming the single lift accessing just three landings insufficient. But before those changes could be implemented, the focus shifted to safety: On February 1, 2020, a 19-year-old college student put his feet up on a waist-high railing on the sixth level and jumped to his death. Calls for installing safety barriers went unheeded, and three more suicides followed: in December 2020, in January 2021, and on July 29, 2021, when a 14-year-old boy jumped, even though extra security, a “buddy” system requiring groups, paid admission, and other measures were in place to prevent suicides.

The Vessel has been closed indefinitely since the fourth suicide, though reports from last weekend — the first in the New York Post — indicate it will reopen by the end of the year with the installation of steel safety mesh. “[W]hile the first two levels of the spiraling staircase will be fully reopened,” the Post article says, “the floors above will only be partially accessible to the public in places where the barriers are added.” The New York Times is more precise: “The steel mesh enclosures will be added to about half of the attraction’s traversable area, with barriers on four stairwells and adjoining platforms.” Given that the top level is open to the sky, that level will not receive a mesh enclosure and will remain closed. Vessel is made up of 150 flights of stairs with 2,500 steps, all connected by 80 landings — one mile long in its entirety.

World-Architects visited Hudson Yards this morning after hearing about the floor-to-ceiling steel mesh, snapping these photographs of what appears to be a mockup at one landing and its adjacent stairs at the third level. At the time of the fourth suicide an unnamed employee told the Times that “we designed safety barriers for the Vessel a while back. It’s now time to install these,” and last weekend a spokesperson for Hudson Yards told a local news program: “Through a closely coordinated effort with Thomas Heatherwick and Heatherwick Studio, we have developed a plan to install floor-to-ceiling steel mesh on Vessel while also preserving the unique experience that has drawn millions of visitors from around the globe.”

The Heatherwick-designed safety enclosure is made of a steel mesh attached to curved members that extend from the outside of the glass guardrail to the ceiling of the level above. The mesh is designed to withstand any damage, be it from the elements or people trying to cut it, per Related. Looking at it from below, the convex profile of the system makes sense, as it bows out away from people at about chest height, allowing them to look down from the railings and not be face-to-face with mesh, and it echoes the curved undersides of the stairs and landings. While this profile means it won't be physically obtrusive, visitors will be looking through mesh where there wasn't any before, making the fix visually obtrusive — no doubt coming to terms with this was the cause for the delay in implementing a safety barrier and reopening. As of now, a date for reopening the Vessel is not known. Once it does, World-Architects will visit and report on what a safer Vessel experience is like.