In my sophomore year of college, I started to be afraid of balconies. I don’t know where it came from—perhaps it stemmed from a broader fear of heights—but it was and remains an intense phobia. Every time I get up high in an atrium or on a balcony or some other place with little in between my body and the dizzying, distant ground, I panic—I think to myself, I could die here. I back away, because, factually speaking, I could. It would take so little. This is a terrible phobia for an architecture critic to have, seeing as so much of architecture these days is, well, tall, but I manage alright so long as I don’t lean on any railings.
The Vessel in New York City’s Hudson Yards is all balconies, which explains why I’ve only visited it once, and why I will never, ever visit it again. The same fact also explains why the sixteen-story Vessel has been the site of three suicides. The latest, occurring on January 11, prompted the structure’s temporary closure and has led many to question how it might be adapted to prevent jumping.
I visited the Vessel in the spring of 2019, a…