“The non-building of the year.” That is how the grand dame of architectural criticism, Ada Louise Huxtable, dubbed the skyscraper – crowned like a piece of English furniture – that Philip Johnson raised in Midtown Manhattan in the 1980s, and which despite widespread aversion to it at the start, is now unanimously hailed as an icon of postmodernism. Uninhabited for years, the tower has been subjected to an extensive renovation that, besides an updating of the spaces of the lobby, has created a garden behind, in connection with it, where circular patterns give rise to flower beds, fountains, and spots to stop and rest in that intersect under a glass canopy.

Photo: Alex Fradkin. Courtesy of 550 Madison

Photo: Alex Fradkin. Courtesy of 550 Madison