Floating Gardens of Rock City

1970

63.5 x 53 cm

Collaged newspaper / magazine cuttings mounted on coloured card.

Collection British Museum.

A set of four collages in which Lijn visualised transforming the top levels of the New York skyscrapers into fantastic walkways spanning the island of Manhattan. Lijn envisaged using film, holography, and giant installations to create fantasies of beaches and jungles.

The idea being to use the roofs and at times one or two top stories of Manhattan buildings as garden platforms in a network of walkways spanning from building to building, where all pedestrian traffic would be – cafes, stores, entertainment etc. human life would be sky life.

Having always found the rooftops of the buildings in Manhattan exciting and strange, as if their architects had allowed their fantasies free at that distance from the ground, Lijn felt that people should be able to experience them close up.