The two-acre Rooftop Park features a natural feeling, meandering landscape with a planting scheme representative of the distinct planting regions of New York State. Photo by Joe Thomas

SARA NY Presents 2026 Excellence Award in Landscape Design Category to HMWhite, Richard J. DeMarco/MADGI Design and Shimoda Design Group for Morgan North, a 645,000SF Redevelopment of the Largest USPS Postal Distribution Center in New York City by Tishman Speyer

New York, NY–The two-acre urban park atop Morgan North, the expansive, 645,000-square foot redevelopment of what was once New York City’s largest postal distribution center into a multi-use, sustainable property housing creative office space, a multilevel park and street-level retail, has won the Society of American Registered Architects (SARA) New York 2026 Excellence Award in the Landscape Design category.

The project team includes developer Tishman Speyer, landscape architect HMWhite, lead architect Richard J. DeMarco, AIA, Principal of MADGI Design, and design architect Shimoda Design Group.

The SARA NY Design Awards attract entries from across the country and around the world from individuals, firms, and students of architecture and allied disciplines. Awards are granted for a wide range of categories and project types. This year, SARA NY honored 48 professional firms and 24 students with Design Awards.

Located at 351 9th Avenue in Manhattan, Morgan North encompasses an entire city block between 9th and 10th Avenues from West 29th to West 30th Streets. The building varies from a six-story to a ten-story structure along its West 30th Street frontage. The site originally served as a rail yard for the Hudson River Railroad and then as a United States Post Office distribution center, erected in 1933. Rail tracks previously extended from the adjacent High Line spur into the second floor, resulting in a building with large footprints and increased structural capacities. The USPS continues to operate a mail distribution facility on the cellar level and four lower levels of the building.

Tishman Speyer’s intense focus on occupant health and wellbeing is exemplified by Morgan North’s new two-acre rooftop park, one of the largest intensive green roofs atop a commercial building in New York City. This expansive tenant amenity is an integral part of the comprehensive adaptive reuse of the building into a visionary 21st century commercial office building. The building has received a LEED Gold certification and recently won the NYCxDESIGN Award in the Outdoor Space category.

"Morgan North demonstrates that landscape is no longer simply an amenity—it is an essential part of transforming underutilized places into vibrant destinations where people want to work, gather, and connect. This landscape rooftop redefines how people experience work, community, and daily life in the city. We are honored that SARA New York has recognized a project that demonstrates how landscape architecture can unlock the hidden potential of our cities while improving human well-being and reconnecting people with nature," said Hank White, Founding Principal of HMWhite, FASLA.

“The 645,00-square foot Morgan North redevelopment exemplifies the continuing national trend of leading commercial property developers and operators focusing on attracting tenants through expansive amenities and well-designed outdoor areas. The SARA Design Excellence Award recognizes the importance of wellness elements in today’s commercial workplace and the creativity of the owner Tishman Speyer and our design team,” said MADGI Design Principal Richard J. DeMarco, AIA.

"Great architecture does not age — it deepens. The Morgan Post Office, born in 1933, carries nearly a century of human story within its walls. Our work was never about imposing something new upon something old, but listening to what the building still had to offer — and answering with equal generosity.

At the crown of it all, one of Manhattan's great rooftop parks opens to the sky — a reminder that nature is not a luxury, but a birthright. Everyone deserves beauty, air and a moment of restoration in the places they live and work” shared Shimoda Design Group Principal and Chief Creative Officer Joey Shimoda, FAIA, FIIDA.

The Rooftop Park features a variety of spaces designed for collaborative work, recreation, and quiet inspiration. The ground plane is infused with areas for field games, nature walks, food, beverage, and covered gathering areas for work and play. Photo by Joe Thomas

Rooftop Architecture and Landscape Design

The total rooftop park size is two acres or 112,750 square feet of outdoor space. The outdoor areas include the 84,750-square foot 7th Floor Garden Terrace; 30,000 square foot pavilion roof and 8th and 9th Floor terraces; and 8,000-square foot 11th Floor Tower Terrace. The 84,750-square foot roof terrace has been completely reimagined as a landscaped oasis that offers a direct connection with nature, light and air.

The Rooftop Park features a natural-feeling, meandering landscape with a planting scheme representative of the distinct planting regions of New York State, designed by HMWhite. Landscape design principles organized the creation of enhanced views, while shaping spaces to serve a variety of shared uses and scales of activity. Coniferous hedgerows are arranged to mitigate prevailing winds and are combined with groves of canopy trees to soften and cool harsh sunrays. Further, these landscape placemaking features extend seasonal use.

The woven pathways and the mosaic of varied landscapes create a sense of an oasis in the sky. A variety of spaces are designed for collaborative work, recreation, and quiet inspiration. The ground plane is infused with areas for field games, nature walks, food, beverage, and covers gathering areas for work and play.

The landscape design is composed of a series of layers, which references Northeastern US coniferous woodlands. It starts with the evergreen forest at the rooftop’s northern edge, transitions to a shrubland in its middle, and then flows into a low-lying wildflower meadow at its southern roof boundary. Each space is developed within a visually distinct landscape designed to improve comfort and awaken seasonal sensibilities.

Landscape Architecture Highlights:

• Elevated walkway at perimeter to allow views over parapet

• Varied plant types to create colorful micro-environments that promote varied seasonal experiences

• A variety of raised and sunken areas to create a feeling of natural topography

• Varied outdoor congregation area sizes to promote different types of activities – places for solitude, as areas well as for communal gatherings

Distinct Rooftop Park Features:

• Gathering/Yoga Lawn

• Event Open Lawn/Tent ready

• Covered common plazas and trellis structures

• Mini theatre area/Town Hall

• Sunset Terrace

• Vegetable Garden with raised planters

• Abundant and varied furniture groupings

• Decorative lighting design for after-hours activities

• 30,000 RSF glass pavilion addition that anchors the access to the terrace

• Speaker systems throughout

Building Renovation and Expansion

The building’s historic 9th Avenue lobby has been meticulously restored, bringing its brass-framed entrance doors with an ornamental, double-height transom grille to its original beauty. In addition, Tishman Speyer and its architectural team created two new lobbies, one mid-block on West 30th Street and the other on the corner of 10th Avenue and West 30th Street.

The two new lobbies feature rare, oversized 14” wide by 22’ long Douglas fir wood planks that provide a striking, continuous wall surface. Douglas Fir planks are also applied to the ceiling, creating a warm, seamless look to enhance the architecture and lighting design. The 10th Avenue lobby ties itself visually to the adjacent High Line spur by celebrating four large openings where the trains used to access the building. It features a work/lounge area and an intimate lounge room reminiscent of a vintage railroad café car. These hospitality elements promote the lobby space as a place of social gathering, introducing hospitality concepts into a commercial workplace environment.

Levels 5 through 10 have been renovated with new lobbies, core support rooms, restrooms, stairs and eleven new elevators. The fifth and sixth floors boast floor plates of over 180,000 gross square feet each. The architects introduced three massive 32’ x 40’ skylights along the center of the floor plate, which dramatically transformed the 5^th and 6^th floors, exposing the 5^th floor to enhanced natural sunlight. Further, the volume from the 5th floor to the top of the interior of each of the skylights is an impressive 46’, which offers unique design opportunities for future customers.

The 7th floor’s new 30,000-square-foot pavilion features two 60-foot-wide clear span bays, a 17-foot-tall steel frame structure and a monumental skylight system. It is the anchor access point to the massive Rooftop Park amenity space.

Additional team members included construction manager Urban Atelier Group, structural engineer Active Design Group Engineering, MEP engineer and lighting designer Cosentini Associates, LEED consultant: Vidaris/SOCOTEC and historic preservation consultant Higgins Quasebarth & Partners.

HMWhite

For more than three decades, HMWhite has created award-winning landscapes that enhance the quality of life in urban residential and commercial environments. Founded in 1993 by Hank White, FASLA, HMWhite is a New York City–based landscape architecture studio with a distinguished legacy of work on complex residential communities, cultural institutions, large-scale commercial developments, and transformative rooftop landscapes.

Guided by a deep commitment to environmental stewardship, HMWhite designs landscapes that strengthen the relationship between people, nature, and the built environment. The firm's collaborative, evidence-based design process combines creativity, technical rigor, and ecological performance to transform underutilized spaces into vibrant places that promote well-being, foster community, and create lasting environmental, cultural, and social value.

HMWhite's work has received numerous national and international design awards, including honors from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Institute of Architects, the Society of American Registered Architects, the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design, the European Centre for Architecture Art Design, Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, the Urban Land Institute, the New York City Public Design Commission, and the Municipal Art Society of New York. HMWhite's work has been widely published in books and leading architectural and design publications.

Additional information:  www.hmwhitesa.com

MADGI Design

Based in New York City, MADGI Design is a prominent architecture and planning firm predominantly serving commercial, institutional, retail, multi-family, senior housing, and hospitality markets in the greater New York area. MADGI also provides interior design services to commercial, institutional, and multi-family clients. Two principals lead the studio: Richard J. DeMarco, AIA and Steven Andersen.

MADGI and its affiliates served as the architect for several of the most prominent tourist attractions in Manhattan: One World Observatory – the 90,000-sq.-ft. observation deck and retail space atop the new World Trade Center and the renovated landmark Rainbow Room on top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The firm also served as executive architect for the redevelopment of Rockefeller Center’s popular Top of the Rock rooftop, including the recently opened Beam experience that replicates the famous “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” photograph of construction workers enjoying their break while sitting on a beam suspended above Manhattan. The firm’s portfolio also includes legendary New York City restaurants, such as Brasserie Boulud, Fasano, Four Seasons and Rainbow Room.

MADGI was the design force behind the headquarters offices of a multitude of global corporate bluebloods, technology firms and non-profits such as Dentsu, World Economic Forum, Trammo, Vibrant, Dataminr, The Stagwell Group, Innocence Project and Bowery Mission, among others. MADGI’s recent workplace and corporate interior work also includes the 150,000-sq.-ft. East Hanover, N.J., U.S. headquarters and laboratories and the 75,000-sq.-ft. Manhattan offices and testing labs of Givaudan Fragrance. The studio has designed approximately 10 million square feet of office and common use space for both tenants and leading commercial landlords in New York City, including SL Green Realty, Tishman Speyer, The Durst Organization, Hines, Olmsted and Metroloft.

MADGI’s architectural, executive design, and design collaborations portfolio includes the 230-room citizenM New York hotel in Times Square; the 183,000-sq.-ft., 17-story 20 East End Avenue luxury condominium; The Dillon Townhouses and Condominiums, a 205,000-sq.-ft residential complex at 425 West 53rd Street that received an AIA New York State Award of Merit; the 11-story 560 West 24th Street luxury condominium; the 82,000-sq.-ft. Soori Highline luxury condominium on West 29th Street; and the market repositioning of the 100,000-sq.-ft. 160 Fifth Avenue office tower in Manhattan as well as the $330 million redevelopment of The Watermark at Brooklyn Heights luxury senior living community in Brooklyn, NY and the 10-story, 85-apartment Silver Star residential/retail mixed-use building in Long Island City, NY.

Additional information: www.madgi.com

Shimoda Design Group:

Founded on Valentine's Day 2000 by Susan Chang, AIA, and Joey Shimoda, FAIA, FIIDA, Shimoda Design Group was born with a singular mission: to create transformative spaces that inspire. A certified Minority-Owned Business headquartered in Los Angeles, the studio has grown into an internationally acclaimed, multidisciplinary practice — architects, designers, landscape architects, graphic artists, and filmmakers united under a single collaborative vision.

Boutique by choice and mighty by design, Shimoda Design Group operates at the intersection of art, architecture, and experience, crafting environments that are as imaginative as they are enduring.

Design, for Shimoda Design Group, is a catalyst for change. Every project begins with curiosity and is guided by context — listening deeply before drawing a single line, uncovering the cultural, urban, and human dimensions that make each place singular. The result is work that feels as though it could not exist anywhere else, for anyone else.

With 90% of their portfolio rooted in existing structures, Shimoda Design Group has established itself as a leader in adaptive reuse — honoring history while fostering innovation through four guiding principles: Re-Use, Re-Clad, Re-Purpose, and Re-Think.

Landmark projects including Bloomberg's headquarters, the Wheeler Building, and the historic Morgan Post Office in New York exemplify this philosophy, seamlessly balancing sustainability, historic preservation, and forward-thinking design.

Among the studio's most significant achievements is the Morgan North project in New York City — a collaboration with Tishman Speyer, in which Shimoda Design Group served as master planner for the interior and exterior design, and as a shared design collaborator on the expansive landscape. The project stands as a defining example of the studio's ability to orchestrate complex, large-scale environments with precision, vision, and an unwavering attention to the human experience.

Nature and landscape integration are central to the firm's design philosophy. By weaving restorative green spaces, walking paths, and communal gathering hubs into large-scale developments, the studio humanizes ambitious projects and reconnects people to the natural world — encouraging wellness, creativity, and a sense of belonging at every scale.

With global reach and an unwavering conviction that thoughtful, courageous design has the power to shape a better world, Shimoda Design Group continues to redefine the possibilities of architecture, interiors, and human connection — one transformative space at a time.

Additional information: www.shimodadesign.com