Art in Residence: Garden’s Edge Brings Contemporary Practice to Gramercy Park’s Sky Garden Penthouse
by Stella Manferdini
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Image copyright: Courtesy of Agency Esta, ©Theo Coulombe |
At the meeting point of contemporary art and architecture, the Solarium Penthouse (PHC) at 200E20TH in New York’s Gramercy Park sets the stage for Garden’s Edge, an immersive exhibition conceived within the residence itself. Designed by CetraRuddy, the full-floor penthouse has been transformed into a living gallery, framing works by three New York–based artists – Alexandria Tarver, Chellis Baird, and Julia Whitney Barnes – whose practices each engage with the city’s natural and built environments.
Within this light-filled space overlooking Gramercy Park, Stuyvesant Square, and the Manhattan skyline, art and architecture coexist as extensions of one another. Botanical studies, sculptural textiles, and cyanotype prints unfold across the interiors, tracing the complex relationship between urban life and organic growth. The result is both an exhibition and an inhabitable landscape – a penthouse that blurs domesticity and display, permanence and change.
In this conversation, we speak with the artists and the curatorial team behind Garden’s Edge about the ideas that shaped the project: how contemporary art can reimagine private space, how architecture can frame dialogue, and how the city itself becomes a collaborator in the creative process.
In conversation with Lisa Sternfeld, Founder of WLLW
The exhibition speaks to a contemporary longing for nature in hyper-urban contexts. Was this theme a response to the city’s emotional climate, or does it signal a more permanent shift in how we define wellbeing in design?
Art has the power to regulate stress. Research in neuroaesthetics shows that simply viewing art can lower cortisol and increase dopamine, the same chemical released when we experience love or beauty in nature. These effects are especially important in dense, fast-moving cities, where overstimulation is constant and our nervous systems are often on high alert. Nature-inspired art offers a form of sensory restoration that goes beyond the visual - it helps the body return to a state of calm.
This connection reflects biophilia, our innate human affinity for nature and natural forms. The growing pull toward nature in design may be a response to the emotional intensity of urban life, but it also reflects something deeper. We’re beginning to understand that the spaces we live in should support how we feel, not just how things look. At home, nature-inspired art supports that shift. It engages the parasympathetic nervous system, the part responsible for rest and repair, and becomes a quiet, daily source of grounding, connection, and calm.