SECTION LOOKING WEST

Because the architect wanted an uncluttered roof, cooling towers were installed in the basement and warm air discharged through a pylon. No boilers are required, since heat is obtained from utility company steam. The garden is heated with radiators located at the horizontal framing members of the window walls, and air blown down from the roof. On sunny days, because of the glass-house effect, this warm air only operates when the outside temperature falls below 25F. In summer, despite the large glass area, the garden cooling load is less than in the offices where lights are burning.

mer) will be a mean between the New York outdoors and that of the indoor offices. Humidity, a critical factor, will be supplemented by hosing. These atmospheric considerations caused few complications in balancing the air-conditioning system between the garden and office spaces. The range is not entirely sympathetic to every plant, of course, but the landscape architect points out that this temperate-zone indoor garden is something of a pioneering one, and all of the species are expected to thrive.

Irrigation and feeding, supplied by underground pipes to 11 different planting zones, are automatically controlled by timers from preset controls on a liquid fertilizer injector.

At maturity, according to Kiley, the loosely planned planting within a geometrical path system, which reflects the architecture, will gain a strength in the vertical dimension, further reflecting the volume.

Despite Kiley's emphasis on the temperate-zone origin of his landscaping, one wonders whether the planting at Ford is not still a bit lush, a big languorous, a bit too tropical for its midtown New York environment. The entire design of the building was handled with such consummate cool, right down to bronze typewriter stands and subtle silk-thread tapestries, that the magnolias and japonicas and bougainvillae and jacaranda that flourish in the lofty glassed space seem just a trifle overblown even now. Mind, this is a reservation, not a damning complaint. We like Brigitte Bardot as well as Katherine Hepburn; it is just a little startling to see them side by side in the same composition. And the smashing effect of the huge, courageous court volume is such a civic boon that such a complaint becomes niggling.

## Two Sides, Two Effects

Approach to the building is from two directions, giving two effects: either directly off the sidewalk of 42nd Street and up the courtyard staircases to the reception area; or, and this is what Roche sees as the more formal approach, by automobile proceeding (because of one-way streets) across 41st Street, over the Tudor City overpass, and back on 43rd Street (thereby viewing the building from all major aspects), to demount under the lofty porte-cochere created by stepping back the first four floors consecutively. (There is attendant parking for 48 cars at the lower subsurface level.) These are two completely different effects: the one a sense of exhilaration or surprise on entering an indoor park right off the cindery streets of Manhattan; the other an approach to a rather austere, somehow European façade of rosy stone, to discover the garden on the other side only upon entering the building. Roche points out that this contrasting effect was consciously sought; it does