The Ford Fundation Building was building between 1963 and 1968. It was placed at the site of the Hospital for Special Surgery and designed by architect Kevin Roche and engineer John Dinkeloo. It was one of the first planned by them after becoming, in 1961, heads of Eero Saarinen's firm. In 1995 it won the AIA Twenty-five Year Award.
The building has a large tree-filled atrium with 22 storeis, the first of its kind in New York City that why it set the precedent for indoor public spaces in Manhattan office buildings. By using new materials, new environmental controls and new architectural vocabulary, Roche-Dinkeloo wanted to spread the limits of International Style modern architecture in office buildings, with have been unchanged since the Lever House or the Seagram Building.
It is placed in a block and surrounds with a big winter garden, which allows it to be integrated with the environment and the neighborhood and maximizes sunlight for the plants by reflecting a near park in its envelope. It has L-shape that opens to the street and the atrium, allowing the most of the employees to be delighted with the exterior views. The building forms nearly a perfect square with facades of 61 metres high on either side. The envelope is made of weathering steel facing the structural frame, and pink granite wrapping vertical concrete elements, with large glass panes filling in the voids.
This type of dissolution of boundaries was already used, but Roche foments it by stepping back the massing of the interior façade over steel terraces that lead up to and above the main entrance. The atrium continues through one hole made by two stories, reaching a roof of three sections of smaller structures, creating an expansive skylight.
One of the inconvenient of the design of the building is that the privacy is not well preserve. Just looking through the window to the atrium, other offices or the people in the street can be seen and they can see the workers too.
Renovation
The Ford Foundation budget is $190 million is the cost of the renovation, with the vast majority required to bring the building up to city code by 2019. Led by Gensler, the renovation will preserve the building’s iconic architectural design and will "modernize" the landmark building and expand its spaces "for convening and creating a global center for philanthropy and civil society."
The Ford Foundation’s headquarters is one of the iconic landmarks of modern architecture in America and was designed by Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo and Associates. When it opened in 1967, New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable wrote that the Ford Foundation headquarters is “that rarity, a building aware of its world.” The renovation will preserve the finest qualities of the building’s architectural integrity. The building, made of glass, Corten steel, and granite.
"In 1997, New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the exterior, atrium glass walls, and garden of the foundation headquarters as an official landmark, affirming that the building had stood the test of time." announced the Foundation, in a statement, and add, "When completed, the renovated building will be right-sized for the foundation’s workforce, with more collaborative and open space for staff and increased meeting space for nonprofit organizations and the public."
All staff will move out of the building in October 2016 to a swing space. The renovation is expected to be complete in summer 2018.
