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New York City Loft Makes an Escape to a Rooftop Garden

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New York architect Joel Sanders has literally provided an escape hatch for a pair of New York City dwellers with this popped out penthouse roof deck cupola that provides access to a roof terrace planted with sedum and grasses.

Not much to a suburban reader, perhaps, but a real psychological lifeline to the typical denizen of New York City.

Lush plantings at the base of the stair that leads to the roof terrace also help to counter the lifeless concrete jungle of city living.

The stair bulkhead doubles as a skylight, swilling a generous dollop of light down into the space below.

Like most city lofts in downtown New York, this converted warehouse space on Broadway is all one open space. The bed is visible from the kitchen, and every space looks across the central lush green planting with light streaming down form the rooftop hatch.

The bathroom is central to everything under it, with light pouring down the light well.

At the green core central to the space, the owner can bathe surrounded by a lush vegetation wall visible through a glass wall that separates the bathroom from this planted zone.

The rear of the bathroom is clad with modular plant panels. Surmounted by a skylight, this living wall is yet another element that vertically links roof and interior.

Designed for a couple, the lack of privacy is less important than the need to connect with nature in an open green space as well as by being able to escape up the stairs to the roof.

As a former New Yorker, I have a very visceral sense of how important solving this need is. By bringing the garden in, and the home out, Sanders answers the real need for green space that afflicts New Yorkers.

Via Design Milk