Midtown Manhattan Sky Garden

Shorenstein Properties’ 17th floor corporate headquarters renovation within the historic Western Publishing Building included a three sided and accessible wrap-around roof terrace. Fully visible from its interior rooms, the terrace’s empty and undeveloped condition presented an opportunity to reimagine an urban workspace environment. Imagining a garden that visually merges interior office spaces inspired a biophilic transformation that would alter daily employee working experience. The building’s mid-century structural and architectural framework, challenging wind uplift conditions, and strict budget controls were creatively reconciled with green-roof technologies. A wildflower meadow garden emerged as a sustainable landscape character due to its shallow soil depth needs and resiliency of its biodiverse mix of prairie grasses and drought-tolerant flowering perennials. Undulating mounds accentuated the garden’s presence by furthering contrasting its mystical organic qualities within the terraces’ glass and metal frame. The meadow garden’s visual coherence powerfully registers a visual “calm” against its 270-degree cityscape context. The office interior links to a network of timber platforms defined by their landscape embedment provide flexible “break-out” meeting spaces and places of respite.