Silent Spring:
The Ford Foundation and the Naturalization of the Corporate Interior

Diploma 14, Architectural Association, 2019
Location: New York City, USA
Tutors: Pier Vittorio Aureli, Maria Scheherazade Guidici

The initial research for Under Artificial Skies, Silent Spring examines the history of the garden as an integral feature of commercial space, beginning from its modern inception with the pastoral landscaping of suburban American corporations. This corporate pastoral escapism was imported into an urban setting in 1968 with the Ford Foundation Building in New York City, the first office building with a temperate garden atrium. The corporate interior garden has often become a way for companies to obscure their history and current activities behind a shroud vegetation, referencing an idealized natural world antithetical to their own existence and organization. An abridged version of the research was published in PNYX issue #61.