63 Madison Avenue
New York City, USA
We are delighted to be part of the winning team led by Wilkinson Eyre in the Metals in Construction magazine 2020 Design Challenge for 63 Madison Avenue in New York City. Our team, which included Eckersley O'Callaghan, Gartner and Level Infrastructure, won first prize in the international ideas competition to upgrade an existing aging, energy-inefficient high-rise office building to comply with NYC’s Green New Deal goals and create a more desirable space for the building’s occupants.
The site presents a hard urban environment, thin on biological diversity and inhospitable to pedestrians during hot and humid summers. The introduction of a ‘Second Skin’ facade system brings opportunities to create biodiverse habitats with immediate and sustainable benefits to people and our planet.
The landscape design aims to complement the environmental and operational enhancements afforded by the new adaptive façade. The proposed planting scheme responds to a matrix of expected solar and ambient conditions (light, heat, humidity and seasonal variations) multiplied across the range of amenity spaces and facade components (balconies, winter gardens and terraces; shading devices and reflectors). Planting types for each combination establish parameters for plant species selections that can be customised for specific building tenants.
Often celebrated for its cultural diversity, New York City (‘Mannahatta’) comprised a biologically diverse and fertile natural landscape of hills, valleys, forests, fields, freshwater wetlands, salt marshes, beaches, springs, ponds and streams, supporting a wide range of wildlife and sustaining people for thousands of years before European settlers arrived in the 1600s. We propose to draw from these 55 ecological communities to create a baseline planting palette to increase biodiversity and improve ecological resilience within this highly built urban environment.
We also propose to incorporate a selection of non-native plants to broaden the range of habitats and landscape amenities on the site. These are made viable in the new microclimates created by our team’s proposed ‘Second Skin’ façade system.