All-electric tower at 505 State Street includes phone detox

New York’s first all-electric skyscraper, the angular glass and poured concrete tower at 505 State Street, is obviously high-tech. The building has 440 rental units equipped with minimalist induction hobs and Wi-Fi-enabled Ecobee smart thermostats that learn and adapt to your schedule. There are expansive, shared workspaces with Zoom rooms that you can book on your phone. But the spacious, sunny room on the second floor is decidedly Luddite. A sign next to the door, filled with ferns, orchids and potted trees, explains the concept: No phones allowed. “We wanted to give people space to disconnect emotionally and mentally,” says AJ Pires, president of Alloy, the project’s developer.

The Grow Room, as it is called, is home to 500 plants, including Woodwardia chain ferns, South Florida downy trees with pink Seuss balls, and a bog with lotuses and cup alocasia floating in muddy water. There is pleasant light, a gentle breeze from fans constantly circulating in the air, and white Goop-style bouclé chairs. After years of luxury buildings offering Wi-Fi and connectivity, filled with Peloton gyms and app-based concierge services, turning some version of mental peace into a luxury amenity is a bit audacious. It’s also the almost inevitable evolution of two increasingly popular, interconnected trends designed to quiet the anxieties of our smartphone-filled era: tech-free spaces and biophilic design, of which some of the most enthusiastic practitioners have found among the tech companies coordinating our increasingly optimized lives. This brings to mind Adam Neumann’s preference for walking barefoot: The peace-seekers who use the Grow Room tend to be those willing to pay $4,700 a month for a one-bedroom apartment (excluding tenants of the building’s 45 affordable apartments). .

More greenery in the Grow Room.
Photo: Valery Rizzo

While in the mid-1990s putting up a green wall in the hall was considered impressive, companies are now hiring companies to design elaborate plant landscapes that rival Victorian-era conservatories, with hanging planters, water features and meditation nooks. “It’s a quirky space where people can engage in things outside of technology,” says Abby Lee of Outlands Botanics, who designed the space in collaboration with Meaghan Lynch and Rachel Johnston of Studio Prospect, an architecture and landscape architecture firm, and Walk and Talk Consulting , a design-build firm that also worked on Russ & Daughters Cafe and Lilia. “People visiting this building may not be exposed to nature every day, but it can be a nice reminder,” Lynch says. So far, they’ve noticed people talking quietly among the ferns, reading, or staring into space.

“Biophilia is definitely thriving,” says Rebecca Bullene, founder of Greenery NYC, a garden design firm that has worked in the Hinge, Etsy and New York offices Times. “Fifteen years ago, someone wanted to have some potted plants in the conference room. Now companies want to give employees access to a good production program, make them feel less stressed and be more productive.” For example, Google’s new headquarters in Chelsea is 1.5 acres covered with mostly native plants to attract pollinators. Amazon, a company known for being stingy compared to other tech giants, has built Sphere design — essentially an indoor rainforest — the Seattle headquarters has a three-building conservatory filled with 40,000 plants from the cloud forest regions. He also adds that technologies have improved significantly: automated irrigation systems and crop lighting now allow for much more ambitious designs in many different types of spaces.

A room where you can’t do anything.
Photo: Valery Rizzo

The Grow Room is, in a way, a miniature of the already popular detoxification place. Unplugging is no longer just about leaving your phone while you run errands; it must be A mindful, and now you can make money on them, practice. (Partly by social convention — telling people to mute notifications is now considered basic etiquette — and partly out of necessity, because how else can you force yourself to not obsessively check your phone?) Miraval Resorts & Spa, an upscale technology-intentionally-free resort with locations in Austin in Arizona and the Berkshires launched a digital mindfulness program in 2018, providing guests with cellphone sleeping bags for their rooms and maps of where phone use is allowed — mainly high-traffic areas such as lobbies. “Looking to the future, the demand for digital-free environments will continue to grow as more people seek spaces that are intentionally designed to support well-being, presence and meaningful reconnection,” the company said in an email.

And now they can do it at regular intervals between Zoom meetings, in the Grow Room. “Now people spend 15 minutes at lunch and call it a digital detox,” says Trine Syvertsen, a professor at the University of Oslo who wrote the 2020 book Digital detox: the politics of disconnection. Syvertsen adds that opposition to technology is nothing new – TV stands were a kind of proto-phone sleeping bag – but the way we deal with digital addiction is different than in the past. “It’s a very individual thing – there is internal shame and the obligation to balance it,” he says. There are, of course, many methods available to do this: productivity apps that limit screen time or silence notifications, and for those who can afford it, physical apps like tech-free schools, retreats, and spaces like Grow Room.

The triple-glazed windows on one side of 505 State’s Grow Room overlook the Apple Store on Flatbush Avenue, at the nearby Atlantic Crossing, where there is near-constant traffic. Developer Pires claims that this was an intentional choice. “A counterpoint to all the confusion and chaos.” The Grow Room is quiet, only the sound of the peat bog fountain and ferns gently swaying in the fans can be heard. Being constantly on the Internet, once a sign of wealth, is increasingly becoming its opposite. As Syvertsen put it: “Offline is the new luxury.”