MEMORIAL SLOAN KETTERING CANCER CENTER /
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, HUNTER COLLEGE – Manhattan, New York City
The landscape design for MSKCC-CUNY comprises a drive entry with temporary sculpture garden at the street level and two rooftop terrace gardens at the second and sixth floors of a high-rise medical facility in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Not surprisingly, preserving city skyline views is one of the primary goals. The terrace gardens are to serve as places of study for the college students, places of waiting for hospital visitors, and places of healing for patients.
Office: RGR Landscape
Status: In progress
Design Architect: Ennead
Architect of Record: Perkins Eastman
Landscape Project Management: Sid Burke
Landscape and Detail Design: John Merritt, Sid Burke, Ennead team
Landscape Renderings: Kristen Rearden
Architecture Overview
As this project is entirely on structure, and the landscape responds directly to the varying façades, it is worthwhile to take a brief look at the architecture.
Terrace Planting
Since the planting area on the sixth floor is so extensive, the planting scheme has to be efficient, accommodating all the different light situations but not so elaborate as to pose problems for acquiring materials, to escalate costs, and to complicate maintenance. We attempted to reconcile these concerns with a matrix planting as described by plant specialists Piet Oudolf and Noel Kingsbury. Interlocking drifts of visually neutral species would be dotted with feature plants more known for their color and spectacle. These feature plants would provide the visual structure. In order to create Winter interest in various locations, we evenly distributed groupings of evergreens throughout the terrace. We also selected perennials that yield interesting seedheads and ornamental grasses that maintain their posture during Winter. The muted Winter tans of the grasses could then serve as a neutral backdrop against which the seedheads can silhouette.
The approach to planting on the upper level terraces was not at all straightforward. We had to contend with the somewhat unpredictable micro-climate of New York City rooftop gardens (NYC is Zone 6 at ground level, and more like Zone 5 on high-rise rooftops and terraces), the desiccating winds coming off the East River, and a very strange inversion: the South side of the building receives the least amount of sunlight.
Furthermore, we had to be mindful of the users of this facility. These are people who are very sick and may not have the best outlook on life. The desaturated browns of plant dieback and the plants' flagging stature with the onset of Winter likely would not exactly convey a message of hope. Addressing this challenge, we created a palette in which there is year-round interest in the gardens even as the plants go dormant.
2nd Floor Terrace
The Hunter College students are to be the primary users of this terrace. The material of the ground plane indicates the anticipated landscape use with concrete pavers defining the linkages and wood decking defining places of repose. That the façade, clad in terra cotta, is completely opaque along the primary axes of the terrace and that this terrace will be used primarily by students, we had the luxury of not worrying about the appearance of the plants from within the building. The plant palette here focuses more on form and texture as opposed to color and Wintertime interest.
6th Floor Terrace
The façade at the sixth floor terrace has the opposite relationship between interior and exterior than that of the second floor terrace. Here, it is completely glazed full height and the primary users here are staff and patients. The gardens on the sixth floor terrace are observed primarily from the interior spaces, especially the lobby and cafeteria. Since this is a cancer facility, the gardens cannot look lifeless at any point throughout the year. Therefore, maintaining color during Winter is paramount. In addition, the planting selection is tempered by the full range of light conditions from full sun to full shade and must account for the desiccating winds coming off the East River.
Temporary Garden
After the construction of Memorial Sloan Kettering, the hospital building will soon be conjoined with the new academic building of Hunter College. In between the two finished buildings, part of the construction of the academic building will be a sunken garden near their respective entrances. However, until the academic building is constructed, the hospital and the design team decided a street level temporary garden would serve as a "lid" until it was time to build the sunken garden directly underneath.
