The first all-electric skyscraper in New York City, an angular tower of glass and cast concrete at 505 State Street, is clearly technologically advanced. The building’s 440 rental units feature minimalist induction cooktops and Wi-Fi-enabled Ecobee smart thermostats that learn your schedule and adjust accordingly. There are expansive shared workspaces with Zoom rooms that you can book on your phone. But an airy, sunlit room on the second floor is decidedly Luddite. Filled with ferns, orchids and potted plants, a sign next to the door explains the concept: No phones allowed. “We wanted to give people space to unplug, emotionally and mentally,” says AJ Pires, CEO of Alloy, the project’s developer.

The Grow Room, as it’s called, is home to 500 plants, including Woodwardia chain ferns, South Florida powder trees with Seussian pink fluff balls, and a peat bog with lotus flowers and teacup alocasia floating in muddy-looking water. There is nice light, a gentle breeze from the fans that constantly circulate air, and Goop-like white bouclé chairs. After years of luxury buildings boasting Wi-Fi and connectivity, Peloton-filled gyms and app-based concierge services, turning some version of mental silence into a luxury amenity is a bit bold. It’s also an almost inevitable development of two increasingly popular, interrelated trends meant to assuage the angst of our smartphone age: technology-free spaces and biophilic design, which have found some of their most enthusiastic practitioners among the tech companies that orchestrate our increasingly optimized lives . It’s reminiscent of Adam Neumann’s preference for going barefoot: The peace-seekers who enjoy the Grow Room will mostly be the kind who can pay $4,700 a month to live in a one-bedroom (aside from the tenants of the building’s 45 affordable units ).

More greenery in the Grow Room.
Photo: Valery Rizzo

While it used to be considered impressive to throw up a green wall in the lobby in the middle of the waist hunt, companies are now hiring firms to design elaborate plantscapes that rival Victorian-era conservatories, with hanging planters, water features and meditative nooks. “It’s a whimsical space for people to engage with 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 design firm, and Walk and Talk Consulting , a design firm that also worked on Russ & Daughters Cafe and Lilia. “People who visit the building may not have a natural experience every day, but it can be a nice reminder,” says Lynch. So far, they have noticed people having quiet conversations among the ferns, reading or staring off into space.

“Biophilia is really booming,” says Rebecca Bullene, the founder of Greenery NYC, a garden design firm that has worked with offices for Hinge, Etsy and New York Times. “Fifteen years ago, someone wanted some potted plants in a conference room. Now companies want to give employees access to a good facilities program, make them feel less stressed, more productive.” Google’s new headquarters in Chelsea, for example, is landscaped with 1.5 hectares of mostly native plants designed to attract pollinators. Amazon, a company known for its stinginess compared to other tech giants, built Sphere project — essentially an indoor rainforest — at its headquarters in Seattle, a three-building conservatory with 40,000 plants from cloud forest regions. Also, she adds, technologies have improved significantly: Automated irrigation systems and grow lights now enable much more ambitious projects in many different types of spaces.

Space to do nothing.
Photo: Valery Rizzo

The Grow Room is in some ways a miniature of the already popular detox retreat. Disconnecting is no longer just a matter of leaving your phone behind while you run errands; there must be one attentive, and now revenue, practice. (Partly out of social convention — letting people know when you mute your messages is now considered basic etiquette — and partly out of necessity, because how else can you force yourself not to compulsively check your phone?) Miraval Resorts & Spa, an exclusive intentional technician -free resort with locations in Austin, Arizona and the Berkshires, started a digital mindfulness program in 2018, providing guests with cell phone sleeping bags for their rooms and maps of places where phones are allowed — mostly high-traffic areas, such as the lobby. “Looking forward, the desire for digital free environments will only continue to grow as more people seek out spaces that are intentionally designed to promote well-being, presence and meaningful engagement,” the company wrote in an email.

And now they can do it, in neat increments between Zoom meetings, in the Grow Room. “Now people do 15 minutes over lunch and they call it a digital detox,” says Trine Syvertsen, a professor at the University of Oslo who wrote the book 2020 Digital Detox: The Politics of Disconnecting. Technological backlash is nothing new, Syvertsen adds – TV cabinets were a kind of proto-sleeping bag – but the way we deal with digital addiction is different than in the past. “It’s very individualized—there’s this inner shame, the obligation to balance it,” she says. And of course, there’s a grab bag of methods available to do that: productivity apps that limit screen time or silence notifications, and, for those who can afford it, physical ones, like tech-free schools, retreats, and spaces like Grow Rooms.

The triple-pane windows on one side of 505 State’s Grow Room overlook the Apple Store on Flatbush Avenue, the nearby intersection of the Atlantic Ocean, a near-constant traffic jam. It’s a choice that Pires, the developer, says was intentional. “A counterpoint to all the distraction and chaos.” The grow room, on the other hand, is quiet, just the sound of the peat ant fountain and the ferns slowly swaying in the fans. Being online all the time, once a sign of prosperity, is increasingly the opposite. As Syvertsen put it: “Offline is the new luxury.”