Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
CBS News is reporting on the re-opening of The Vessel at Hudson Yards after closing abruptly in January of 2021 in response to a rash of suicides. The Vessel now includes expanded safety measures, with steel mesh barriers installed on four stairwells and adjoining platforms. These barriers are... View full entry
The Vessel has announced it will again be open to visitors in New York City later this year after upgraded anti-suicide safety measures are installed in response to a spate of tragedies that have befallen its existence since being inaugurated in March of 2019. The attraction has been closed since... View full entry
Earlier this week, engineering and construction giant Bechtel and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) announced a multiyear partnership dedicated to preventing construction worker suicides. The partnership aims to reach 500,000 U.S. construction workers over five years... View full entry
Construction of the lingering suicide prevention upgrades is wrapping up on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The project's long road to culmination was covered by the New York Times recently as contractors work to finish installing the netting system, which was more than 80% in place as of... View full entry
Hudson Yards is reopening The Vessel this week with a renewed focus on suicide prevention following a rash of incidents last year. The Vessel was closed in January after three people took their lives inside the 150-foot sculpture over a period of 15 months. Harm-reduction trainings have been added... View full entry
The Vessel, the spiraling staircase at Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s Far West Side, was closed to visitors on Tuesday, a day after a 21-year-old man jumped to his death in the third suicide in less than a year.
It was unclear when the 150-foot structure, the vast development’s centerpiece, would reopen to the public.
— The New York Times
According to the NYT, the Vessel sculpture at Hudson Yards, which opened in March 2019, will remain closed "until further notice." View full entry
Police officers on the scene Saturday night asked visitors climbing on the 154 interconnecting staircases to leave the structure. It closed 30 minutes before its usual 7 p.m. shutdown. On Sunday, the site reopened to the public. — New York Times
Construction has begun on a steel net to prevent people from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge, after years of debate over whether such an obstacle would mar the bridge’s romantic image.
For at least the next two years, crews will toil throughout the night to build a coarse web of marine cable beneath the Art Deco span that is both an international symbol for engineering beauty and a magnet for suicides.
— San Francisco Chronicle
"Oakland companies Shimmick Construction Co. and Danny’s Construction Co. won the contract to design and build the net for $211 million — about three times what the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District Board of Directors had proposed when it put the project out for bid in... View full entry
Roughly 25 people each year jump to their deaths from San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, which prompted city leaders to authorize a plan to erect a kind of suicide-prevention stainless steel cable netting twenty feet below the bridge's deck. The netting, which is painted gray to blend in with... View full entry
Less depressing than construction, not nearly as happy-making as arts, design, entertainment, sports and media: according to the CDC, architects are the fifth most likely to commit suicide in comparison with members of other professions, especially if you're a male architect (data for female... View full entry
Rural adolescents commit suicide at roughly twice the rate of their urban peers, according to a study published in the May issue of the journal JAMA Pediatrics. Although imbalances between city and country have long persisted, “we weren’t expecting that the disparities would be increasing over time,” said the study’s lead author, Cynthia Fontanella, a psychologist at Ohio State University.
“The rates are higher, and the gap is getting wider.”
— the New York Times
"Suicide is a threat not just to the young. Rates over all rose 7 percent in metropolitan counties from 2004 to 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In rural counties, the increase was 20 percent." View full entry
Among facets that critics may seize upon — and, this being N.Y.U., there will certainly be critics — is that the screens express technology’s new primacy, all but obscuring traditional forms of scholarship behind a cascade of random data. Critics may also discern a feeling of defeat in having to undertake such a fundamental alteration in the hope of saving students’ lives. — cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com
Artist Mike Kelley has passed away at his home in Los Angeles, having apparently taken his own life. The tragic news was confirmed to BLOUIN ARTINFO by Helene Winer, of New York's Metro Pictures gallery, a long-time associate of the artist. — artinfo.com