Museum Tower Roof

New York, NY | Area: 5000 SF

Located on the roof the Museum of Modern Art, the Roof Terrace project creates a conversation with the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden below.  Originally designed by Philip Johnson and recently reconceived by the architect Yoshio Taniguchi, the Rockefeller Sculpture Garden has been called "the most distinctive single element of the museum today."

The two urban garden spaces, now visually linked, converse in the vocabulary of modernism.  The small steel pavilion pays homage to both Mies van der Rohe and Johnson's Glass House.  As a viewing shelter, the pavilion offers a dramatic framing of the city eight stories above the street.  The twisting stainless steel and brass sculpture titled, Chinatown, by artist Forrest Myers dances for Picasso's She-Goat and the other iconic sculptures below.   An L-shaped wall divides the vertical experience of Manhattan to the south from the horizontal view to the north. 

The roof terrace becomes an outdoor room that is discovered progressively.  Entering the terrace, the copse of birch trees draws one to the north and the overlook of the MoMA garden below.  From there the pavilion’s perforated metal panels create an intriguing screen providing glimpses of something beyond. The pavilion then reveals the Myers sculpture, which anchors the terrace’s east end.

The terrace affords a unique experience of the city.  Unlike being at street level or looking out from a penthouse, the occupant of the roof terrace is placed amidst the city.

Photo Credits: Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates 

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.