
NYU LMC ALUMNI COURTYARD
New York, NY
2022 ASLA-NY Merit Award
The Alumni Courtyard is the center of the academic wing of the NYU Langone Medical Center campus. JPLA designed this courtyard as a plaza that is open and flexible, accommodating events, lectures, work sessions, casual dining and everyday campus life. The courtyard will serve the student cafe in Smilow, the newly renovated library in Medical Science Building West and the new Science Building which is home to a extensive cafeterias, convention areas and research laboratories.
The courtyard sits on top of the campus vivarium. There is very limited depth for soil below the paving. The design uses the grade change between the raised elevation of the new Science Building to create a central plinth with monumental sit steps on two sides. This allows depth for the central trees planted in a continuous plane of groundcover. Raised planting beds clad in blackened steel surround the edges of the courtyard, framing the central plaza. These areas are planted with a variety of forest floor understory plants and shaped with intimate niches with seating amidst the lush plantings.
The Courtyard, as well as much of the NYU Langone Campus, was flooded during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The design of the Alumni Courtyard incorporates rising flood gates and raised curbs at buildings to protect interior spaces. The courtyard plantings were selected for their resilience to tidal flooding, urban pollutants and tolerance to deep shade.
CLIENT: NYU Langone Medical Center Real Estate Development
COLLABORATORS: Ennead Architects

New York, NY
LEED Platinum Rated
The Science Building is a LEED Platinum research facility located on the NYU Langone Medical Center Campus in Manhattan. The project utilizes the 14,000 SF roof space to restore native habitat and connect fragmented ecosystem corridors along the waterfront. The native green roof supports a diversity of native micro-climates while relying entirely on a built-in reservoir of rainwater for irrigation. Accessible terrace spaces are built into the green roof to provide students and research faculty a place to study or find peace in a high-pressure environment. Terraces are designed as flexible spaces that both furnish the everyday needs of users and afford opportunities for large gatherings during presentations and celebrations.
The landscape for both the Science Building and Alumni Courtyard were designed to be resilient to future flooding. At-grade planting and surface materials were designed to withstand occasional inundation of saltwater. Deployable flood gates and planted berms protect buildings from up to 10 ft. of flood waters.
CLIENT: NYU Langone Medical Center Real Estate Development
COLLABORATORS: Ennead Architects

New York, NY
Winner of the 2012 ASLA New York Chapter Merit Award
NYU Langone Medical Center is the home to the 5,500sf Fleck Courtyard that serves doctors, staff, patients and visitors of the hospital and its new cafe. JPLA transformed an underused, inhospitable courtyard into an active and beloved gathering space. It is a calm respit featuring a raised central lawn with a mounded birch grove and woodland plantings. There are variety of vantage points from which one can sit and enjoy the courtyard – cafe tables, stone benches, and the monumental pre-cast concrete steps surrounding the central lawn. The courtyard straddles two structures, a parking garage and a research laboratory, so much of the project was designed and detailed as a green roof.
We continue to be involved with the oversight of the maintenance of this courtyard.
CLIENT: NYU Langone Medical Center Real Estate Development
COLLABORATORS: Michielli + Wyetzner Architects

This publicly accessible plaza in the East Village of Manhattan is a signature space within this hospital campuses multi-year master plan. Canted stone walls with planting anchor the plaza on the corner of this busy intersection and create a verdant foreground to the hospital building. The landscape provides dynamic views for the interior lobby space and protected places to sit and gather amongst lush plantings. Trees and shrubs add ecological value by attracting pollinators and providing habitat for local birds, as well as absorbing excess rainwater before it flows into the local storm water system.

New York, NY
JPLA completed the planting design for this 23,000 sf courtyard landscape at NYU Langone Medical Center as a link to several other landscapes within the medical campus that JPLA designed. The Tisch Courtyard landscape includes on-grade planting, intensive green roof planting, and over-sized planters designed after those at the neighboring Fleck Courtyard. The planting typologies include lawns, sun and shade-tolerant meadows, as well as forest floor understory plantings. Many of these plantings are also used in the planted areas of the new Science Building and Alumni Courtyard landscapes which will be constructed in Spring and Fall 2017.
CLIENT: NYU Langone Medical Center Real Estate Development
COLLABORATORS: Quennell Rotschild & Partners, Ennead Architects

This Hospital campus expansion included a comprehensive landscape design for the renovation of the existing Hospital’s labor and delivery center. The landscape surrounding the hospital incorporates a new entry drive and turnaround, entrance plazas at two levels, as well a hospital courtyard and roof garden. The larger landscape incorporates walking paths with seating areas for expectant mothers, visitors, and staff as well as an extensive planting buffer for screening, privacy and stormwater retention. The design shapes the dramatic topography of the existing building’s thirteen-foot elevation change into a rounded hillside with stone retaining walls and a terraced landscape with amphitheater seating. The entry landscape procession creates a new brand to the campus and a welcome approach to the hospital.

New York, NY
This temporary installation is a beautification of a construction fence and temporary planting which can be seen from the lobby of NYU Langone Medical Center. This has been used throughout the courtyard and phase of the project begin and are completed. The super-graphic image of a birch forest, an inspiration for the Tisch planting design, is imposed upon the fence as a backdrop. In front of this, the theme is repeated in over-sized painted galvanized troughs planted with river birches and under story plants. A ground plane of Long Island beach pebbles creates a natural floor that matches the paving palette of the project under construction. JPLA is also the Landscape Architect responsible for the Planting Design and Installation of the completed Tisch Courtyard.

Manhasset, NY
LEED Silver Rated
This project includes four main spaces; the South Garden, the Upper Garden, the Interior Courtyard and the Entry/Drop-off Area. The landscape design for the Entry and Drop-off Area is simple: a repetition of materials and forms that promote clear and safe circulation. The South Garden, adjacent to the entry, provides seating, a rolling lawn and shade trees surrounding a serpentine wall. Above the serpentine wall, on structure, is the Upper Garden, characterized by mounds shaped by tilted stone walls and planted with lush highland plantings. On the 4th Floor, the Interior Courtyard, above a stepped slab, has large curved planters, pedestal pavers and custom linear seating. The large curved planters are tilted to provide views of nature and to create a sense of privacy for the patients in adjacent rooms. Responsible stormwater management was crucial to protect the quality of drinking water on Long Island, a sole source aquifer. Throughout the landscape, water is directed to permeable surfaces, allowing it to infiltrate and recharge the local aquifer.
JPLA took this project from Concept Design through Construction Documents.
CLIENT: North Shore University Hospital Long Island Jewish Heath Systems
COLLABORATORS: Stantec Architecture + Ennead Architects