Ralph Applebaum Associates

The Ford Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants with the goal of improving human welfare worldwide. Across eight decades, its mission has been to reduce poverty and injustice, strengthen democratic values, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement.

RAA worked with the Ford Foundation, in marking its 75th anniversary, on communications enhancements to its landmarked, iconic headquarters on 43rd Street in Manhattan. Designed with the notion of having urban greenspace accessible to all, it is an example of environmental psychology’s application in architecture.

RAA sought to complement the building’s unique identity. Large-scale photographs and interactive media stations highlight the foundation’s history, celebrating grantees and their work. Two touch-screens provide access to its archive of historic images and present profiles of grant givers and grantees, along with Nobel laureates funded by the Foundation. The installation is flexible, allowing images and media to be easily changed and updated.

The enhancements provide a rich visual backdrop to the building’s public spaces—main lobby, elevator lobbies, and waiting rooms—where visitors, grantees, and grant applicants meet and converse with their peers on the front lines of social change.

The effect was to add a personal, human perspective to the Foundation’s work, showing that it affects real lives around the world.