Located in Manhattan, St. John’s Terminal has been adapted into a center for tech and innovation as the North American headquarters for GOOGLE’s global business organization. The former terminus of the raised railway that has been repurposed as The High Line linear park has been skillfully engineered to support extensive landscaped terraces, with roughly 1.5 acres planted with New York native habitat. Located on the original shoreline, the entry plaza and adjacent beautified streetscape form a new gateway to Hudson River Park. Urban design improvements include a new mid-block crosswalk connecting to the park, and a verdant street connection between Washington Street and the West Side Highway.
Open to the public, the entry plaza provides an immersive garden experience through lush, resilient understory plantings and groves of native trees. The design draws from natural shoreline forms with planted berms and natural boulders complemented by geometric stone seats and paving regionally sourced from upstate New York. At the exterior of the 2nd floor, the existing train tracks and platforms emerge from the face of the building and are planted with native trees, shrubs, and ground cover that appear as though they have spontaneously taken root there. Seven stories of window boxes on the north façade provide an ecological ladder for local birds and insects as they traverse from the plaza up to the 12th-floor terrace. NYC Audubon has documented approximately 40 bird species using the habitat created at St. John’s Terminal—including several species never before documented on a green roof.
Collectively, the terraces provide a
diverse range of work-space environments that inspire collaboration and
imagination. The 4th-floor terrace, located on the roof of the existing
building, takes cues from its industrial past through distinctive architectural
elements, including wind-mitigation screens, pergolas, and seating nooks. The
events terrace hosts visitors
from the auditorium with a large flexible space, planted islands, fossilized
limestone bar counters, and pergolas. The 11th-floor terrace is a quarter-mile-long, 360-degree walking
path that offers a moment of respite, with exceptional views across the water
and of the Manhattan skyline. The walking path is framed by plantings inspired
by the Dutch term, Bloemendaal – or “Valley of Flowers” – used to characterize
the qualities of pre-development Manhattan. The 12th-floor terrace brings
employees back to nature with rocky outcroppings and emergent alpine plants at
the meditation garden and intimate seating areas nestled in the Pine Grove. A
large lawn with rolling topography, a bosque of oak trees and catenary lights,
supports flexible use for wellness programming, happy hour events, and lunch hour picnicking.
Sustainable strategies are woven through every element of the project; timber for the decking, furniture, and
windscreens across the terraces is repurposed from the historic Coney Island
boardwalk; 100 new trees have been planted on site; solar
arrays at the terraces provide an expected generation capacity of approximately
100 kilowatts of renewable energy; and the site
is designed to retain up to 92,000 gallons of rainwater.
