SETTING THE STAGE

At the heart and head of The New York Times’s new headquarters, in one of New York City’s densest neighborhoods, live symbolic fragments of the Hudson Valley landscape. The 1.5 million-square-foot glass and steel complex showcases a woodland garden nestled within its core, and a sun-drenched meadow on its roof framed with Maples forms its crown. Themes of transparency and juxtaposition permeate the design and reveal Nature at the core of this man-made construct.

The pair of modest, yet distinct gardens occupy extremely diverse growing conditions – moist, protected shade on the ground level; and fully-exposed to weather extremes 52 stories in the air. The high-rise office building, set in among a variety of other tall structures, posed significant horticultural challenges and required microclimatic analysis and computer-modeling simulations to understand future growing conditions well before the building’s actual existence.