Park Loggia

Strategically located a block from Central Park, the 7th-floor roof terrace orientation and configuration frame a powerful axial view corridor between the Hudson River and the Park. Despite the terrace’s programmed function as the building’s multi-use shared open space, its shallow and long linear spatial proportion appeared more suited to a private residential garden. Each adjacent interior amenity room commands views directly onto the terrace and to buildings across the street. The neighboring exposures and the roof’s parapet wall proximity called for a vegetated garden wall. Planted against the roof’s parapet, a tall, clipped Hornbeam hedge achieves immediate privacy for interior and exterior spaces as a uniform garden screen.  Used as a slice of “green architecture,” the Hornbeam’s narrow form creates a visual and spatial backdrop against which additional human-scale landscape elements punctuate a sequence of garden rooms. A medley of gardens and planted elements emerge as organic leafy erosions from the terrace’s level floor plane. Each shares a complimentary plant community to spatially organize a network of social gathering spaces and establish a visually coherent landscape character. The dynamic power of the terrace’s landscape welcomes residents home with a calming sense of privacy, safety, and emotional and physical comfort.