Project Statement: 
The New York Times Building Lobby Garden emerges as an iconic courtyard design in one of New York City’s densest neighborhoods. Precedent setting microclimatic computer simulations were utilized to scientifically identify and forecast growing conditions that informed a carefully calibrated garden design. References to the Hudson River Valley woodland landscape emphasizes a poetic approach and reveals a simple, yet elegant minimalist design as a restrained visual abstraction with a strong natural statement that harmonizes with the building’s design elements and daily enriches the office workers and visitors’ human sensibilities. 

Project Narrative
PROJECT PURPOSE
Create an iconic courtyard design with which The New York Times building would be identified. Capitalize on its central architectural transparent qualities to introduce the restorative powers of Nature where the garden’s elements incite and nurture the senses of the building’s tenants and strolling visitors.

ROLE OF ENTRANT
Fulfill the aspirations of the New York Times, the building’s developer, Forest City Ratner and the design architect’s concept for a unique garden terrarium design that functions as a multi-layered backdrop within a 360 degree public space perspective.  Establish an appropriately scaled garden design for an unbuilt space that requires low landscape management care. Provide and institute a horticultural and biological soils long-term landscape management program that addresses challenging urban growing conditions.

SPECIAL FACTORS
Context : In New York City’s Time Square neighborhood, the 1.5 million-square-foot glass and steel complex showcases a 70-foot square open-air cube that reveals a woodland garden both from its 3-sided street exposure and from within the building. Set directly over Manhattan Schist bedrock, the garden remains as an environmental artifact as the site’s only unexcavated area. The building’s transparent qualities enable Nature and its seasonal attributes to be revealed at the building’s core and its surrounding streetscape. Consequently, the garden has evolved and earned a popular reputation as a memorable neighborhood and City destination.

Analysis:  Microclimatic conditions were measured through pioneering 3-D computer modeling simulations of seasonal solar radiation levels, wind velocities and temperature variations to identify human comfort influences, growing conditions and horticultural limitations well in advance of the courtyard‘s built form. These scientific findings demonstrated what plantings could be sustained and at what garden location.

Design Evolution: The architect initially envisioned a formal bosque; however, solar analysis simulations conversely revealed that a uniform stand of trees would not perform evenly, nor be sustainable. The presence of an irregular singular stand of mature trees in the garden’s northwest corner evolved to match suitable available sunlight and address the garden’s scale. Following the completion of the micro-climatic solar studies, a block of 45 foot tall multi-stemmed Paper Birches were discovered coincidentally at a nearby New Jersey nursery during another project’s tagging visit. It became clear how the trees’ size and shape perfectly fulfilled the garden’s spatial and visual intentions and most importantly growing conditions at specific garden locations. By graphically superimposing the Birches’ photographic image into garden illustrations, immediate client group consensus was achieved on how the trees satisfied scale, seasonal diversity, regional landscape reference, sense of timelessness, and horticultural science criteria. With their mature height, the Birch canopies absorb more sunlight then specimens half their age. The presentation of the grouping of white-bark trunks was enhanced through their emergence from a rolling organic surface serving as a direct counterpoint to the lobby’s surrounding level floor. Perceived as a ‘garden mat,’ a uniform emerald woodland ground cover carpet brings into focus the garden’s topography and activates the senses. A short, fine leafed woodland grass, punctuated with a scattering of native ferns, provides a cohesive ground hugging structure that compliments the Birch copse and thrives in the garden’s varying levels of deep shade and moisture conditions.

Installation: Recognizing the rarity of the discovery of the 25-year-old 45 foot plus tall Birch trees, the client group was convinced to pre-purchase the trees early in the design process. What turned out to be a much longer time in the nursery than originally forecasted, for over 6 years the trees underwent a preparatory root pruning and biological rootball feeding inoculation program to minimize potential transplant shock. Strict scheduling and coordination with building construction, street closure, tree delivery and usage of the largest single crane in the NY-Metro region was required to hoist each 32,000 pound tree over the 70-foot building facade into their specific pre-determined locations and elevations within the garden. Each tree was assigned a number and assigned to their specific final location based on their distinguishing physical characteristics.

Site Management: For the long-term sustainability, a landscape management program and protocol was developed to ensure consistent and well coordinated care between the trees and the groundcovers.  The program included specific seasonal maintenance needs, citing methods of care for soils, the Birches, ground covers, and irrigation regulation. Organic methods for building and maintaining healthy soil biology with a balance of beneficial fungi, bacteria and microorganisms were developed and coordinated with an organic pest-control program to combat susceptibility to the Bronze Birch Borer. Two distinct water irrigation systems were zoned and integrated to satisfy the Birch trees and woodland ground covers’ different moisture needs.  Separate seasonal water distribution levels are regularly monitored and adjusted.

Design Innovation: As a counterpoint to its dense, bustling Times Square neighborhood, the garden’s location reveals a serene, symbolic fragment of the Hudson River Valley woodland landscape at the heart of this man-made construct. The bold simplicity of a minimalist design ethos creates a restrained visual abstraction, relying on only three plant types which harmonize rather than compete with the building’s design elements. The garden is comprised of three primary elements: tree grove, undulating topographic surface and floating path.
Scale and Spatial Layering— A  grove of seven 50-foot-tall multi-stem Paper Birch trees (Betula papyrifera) and a rolling carpet of Berkeley Sedge (Carex divulsa) punctuated with Autumn Ferns (Dryopteris erythrosora) register a contrasting sculptural relief modulating three feet above and below the level plane of the building lobby’s White Oak floor and a certified IPE timber walkway. The species selection of the emerald carpet of sedges and ferns represented extensive research to prove their robust versatility to perform as a low growing uniform evergreen ground plane that compliments the artful movement of the rolling topography and its aesthetic compatibility with a woodland Birch grove. The inter-relationship of plants with their contrasting leaf colors and textures incite memorable native landscapes while establishing a unique composition against the building’s geometric matrix and the lobby’s bold shades of red and marigold yellow. The wooden footbridge transects the sculpted topography and provides the only means of accessibility and connection that reinforces the garden’s serenity established within the sensitivity of the non-accessible woodland space.  

Seasonal/Temporal Diversity— The consistent fine texture and composition of evergreen sedges and ferns highlight the undulating mounds while staging the golden autumn display of the Birch trees and a constellation of white Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) in early spring. The ever changing light conditions (natural and evening artificial) filtering through the wispy Birch leaves throughout the seasons and day introduce ever-changing garden perspectives that fuel both the familiar and the first time visitor’s imaginations. Both evening and snow-covered winter conditions present new perspectives of the garden court’s soft topographic curves and the Birch’s distinctive multi-stemmed structure and powdery white bark. A diverse collection of regional bird wildlife enlivens the garden further by highlighting the changes in species migratory patterns and their seasonal locale preferences.

Ecological Sustainability— A layered web of planting infrastructure knits the garden with the building and the ground while enabling the continuous development of healthy soil biology. An engineered soil was designed to regenerate endemic growing conditions for both the Birches and the Sedges. Soil profiles were developed to respond to the garden’s bedrock base and to meet the plant communities’ specific biological needs, ensuring enduring performance during each of its four seasons. Supplying the primary garden materials from local sources using a nursery less than 55 miles from the project site and engineering the soil from a plant in Long Island, substantially lowers the garden’s construction carbon footprint. The garden contains a moisture sensored computer-controlled irrigation system (with an integrated water de-chlorination system) that includes a separate subsurface apparatus for the trees and surface mist for the woodland carpet, which also assists in cooling the garden during hot summer periods.

At first glance one could mistake the subtle design for that of a simple garden. The intelligence and infrastructure supporting it incorporate scientific research and best practice technological advancements critical to realizing and sustaining this urban courtyard garden. However invisible, the complexities of setting a stage for a living sanctuary, within an entirely manufactured setting, defines its creation in time.

PLANT LIST:
Paper Birch trees (Betula papyrifera)
Berkeley Sedge (Carex divulsa)
Autumn Ferns (Dryopteris erythrosora)
Snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis)