NY LOBBY ASSIGNMENT_28/11/12

New York lobbies

Ford Foundation

The Ford Foundation Building is an office building in Manhattan designed by architect Kevin Roche and his engineering partner, John Dinkeloo, in 1968.

The twelve-story high box represents a new approach towards the expansion of the limits of the International Style by exploring new architectural vocabulary. Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo aimed to restore the social function of modernism, furthering the goal of human community through facilitation of effective charity by the Ford Foundation. Without abandoning the rationalist principles they learned, they added new ideas to the stagnating concept of the modern office building, which had been unchanged from the completion of the Seagram Building in 1958.

The Ford Foundation building occupies the width of a block, and has facades of about 60 meters on either side, creating a near-perfect square, out of which a large volume has been removed to create an atrium, a garden courtyard. The resulting L-shaped block is occupied by office space which opens to the atrium on one side and to the street on the other. The atrium was the first of it’s kind in Manhattan, and it is credited as setting a highly regarded example for indoor public spaces in office buildings.

The placement of the courtyard with it’s large windows is thought out as to maximize sunlight for the plants. Entering the Ford Foundation Building the lobby shows itself as an opening for the adjoining and tree-filled atrium. This opening seen as a transition between two spaces, makes the lobby a metaphorical window, as it in itself is a space of transition between the inside and the outside.

OPENING in relation to the physical connections – site/program/cirkulation

Situated on a hill, the architect has made an effort to integrate the Ford Foundation Building into the landscape and the neighborhood.

Walking by, one is almost automatically lead into the building by a back stepping facade. The movement of the exterior is expressed in the interior through terraces that lead up to and above the main entrance. The retraction of the lower floors towards the atrium mimic the curve of the site, creating a covered driveway and making the lobby open and free to public. Entering through the glassdoors, you find yourself at at the top of a wide stair moving downwards like the hillside, fusing together the lobby and courtyard garden. The front desk to the right is almost overseen, as one is attracted and invited by the green and open atrium space.

The courtyard is a space as high as the building itself around which all working cirkulation revolves. It is the most public space designed for visitor flow and recreation during workbreaks. As the lobby still is the only link between the public and the private/working area, the elevators and staircases that lead to the office and conference rooms are hidden to limit the accessebility and make them more private. This lobby is not as formed by it’s function as it is formed by the will of Roche. He wants the visitor to cirkulate on the base floor only, closing off the other floors by making the elevator something one has to ask for.

OPENING in relation to the visual connections

The facade of the Ford Foundation Building is composed by a structural steelframe, granite wrapping concrete elements and large windows filling the voids. The glass is a crucial element, reflecting both rationalist transparency and the visual experiences that Roche intended.

There are visual connections from all adjoining rooms to the open atrium, meant to cause occasional interactions between employee and employee, visitor and employee, and visitor and foundation. Even though much glass is used as an element of transparency, the visual connection between the inside and the outside of the building is vague as one has to enter it to locate the lobby and get a overview of the space.

OPENING in relation to the atmosphere

Entering through the glassed entrancedoors one finds oneself in a wide passage of about normal hight, walking further the hight of the space rises suddenly several stories up to the roof, while the groundlevel cascades downwards a stair like a hill. This open space filled with light (natural or artificial) is truly an architectural opening, somehow it is experienced like the end of a tunnel.

A private garden in the density of the city, surprising, green and inviting.