Designwire Daily: from the editors of Interior Design magazine

Thomas Balsley’s New Intercontinental Zen Garden

by Deborah Wilk | Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Despite its very successful cleanup by former mayor Rudolph Giuliani and its current Bloombergian guise as an outdoor urban mall, New York’s Times Square still epitomizes the concept of urban frazzle. Overrun with commuters, theatre lovers, and tourists, employees working in one of the area’s ever-erecting office towers face an onslaught of pedestrian congestion just getting from train to cubicle. Fortunately, those in need of a little sanctity have been provided respite by renowned landscape-architecture and urban-planning firm Thomas Balsley Associates, which just completed a 1,500-square-foot courtyard at the Intercontinental New York Times Square Hotel.

Situated just beyond reception, the garden quietly catches attention with its centerpiece, a metallic sapling set before a red resin panel. Inside, the ground is covered with a blanket of white-washed river rocks, completing the Zen-garden reference. Making the setting still more serene is a vanishing-edge reflecting pool set perpendicular to a series of staggered boxwood hedges. At the center lies a stone bench. The space is enclosed on one side by a stand of mid-height bamboo growing from a stainless-steel planter set against a wall of laminated granite. After dark the trees are illuminated from below, but the true lighting focus come from the LEDs embedded within the resin panel, causing it to glow at night. A twilight visit is sure to take the edge off a tough day at the office. Well, maybe that and well-shaken martini from the hotel bar.

Images courtesy of Thomas Balsley Associates.