Green Giant

edited by Craig Kellogg -- Interior Design, 9/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

In the world of high-stakes commercial real estate, New York's L&L Holding Company has bought the former American Telephone and Telegraph Building, constructed from 1912 to 1916 by William Welles Bosworth. Asked to make improvements that would inspire potential tenants to sign on the dotted line, Joel Sanders Architect jazzed up the marble-clad elevator lobby with a glossy white epoxy floor.

Beyond, a painted blue line zigzags its way to a white gypsum-board structure with a suspended canopy sheltering a reception stand and built-in lacquered desks. Occupying about a quarter of the 15,000-square-foot floor plate, the installation was initially flanked by swaths of real sod. "We kept it going for the opening and the first few weeks," Joel Sanders says. "Then we replaced it with AstroTurf."

The building's future may include a green roof, too. So far, it's no more than a rendering.