Photo by Gary Raynaldo / Inside  the new, light-filled modern 415,000-square-foot Ford Foundation Center For Social Justitce building located at 320 E 43rd St.  in Manhattan feels as if you are standing in a green forest

By Gary Raynaldo     DIPLOMATIC TIMES

After two years of work, the new $205 million renovated Ford Foundation For Social Justice located in mid-Manhattan is open. The Ford Foundation, designed by Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, first open its doors in 1968.   The building consists of twelve-floors wrapped around a skylight atrium.  The building’s exterior and indoor green atrium is well known as an architectural icon of late-American Modernism.  The Ford Foundation decided to fully update the structure with its $205 million refurbishment, by Gensler and the landscape architecture firm Jungles Studio.  The centerpiece of the urban oasis is its  indoor public garden designed by Dan Kiley,  including stepped walkways, a pond, surrounded in crisp, dense greenery with foliage.  It is definitely one of the  City’s hidden  gems worth exploring. 

Credit: Photo: Simon Luethi/Ford Foundation/  The newly updated Ford Foundation building’s garden.

Photo by Gary Raynaldo /  Entrance of Ford Foundation between 42nd and 41st Streets, between 2nd and 1st Aves. in mid-town Manhattan

Video view of majestic interior garden of Ford Foundation Manhattan

Photo by Gary Raynaldo / Ford Foundation’s  Garden  with steps leading to a pond 

Photo by Gary Raynaldo /  Inside the Ford Foundation’s  Garden near the pond

The Ford Foundation Indoor Garden is open to the public weekdays from 10 AM to 4 PM for lovers of architecture, and  those just wanting to  escape the concrete jungle for a serene, calm refuge. There is also an art gallery inside the building.

The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the mission of advancing human welfare. The foundation makes grants through its headquarters and ten international field offices. For fiscal year 2014, it reported assets of US$12.4 billion and approved US$507.9 million in grants.