JFK Airport Terminal 1

JFK International Airport is undergoing one of the most significant terminal redevelopments in its history, and Terminal 1 is at the center of it. The new Terminal 1 is designed to be a world-class gateway — a space that communicates scale, arrival, and a sense of place from the moment passengers enter. As part of that vision, the design team selected large-scale artificial sugar maple trees as a central biophilic feature, anchoring the interior landscape with the quiet authority of a northeastern forest canopy.

Plantscape Commercial Silk was engaged to design and fabricate the trees. The project is currently moving through our Eden Prairie production facility, with installation scheduled for later this year.

Case Studies

Jonah Wang May 18, 2026

Intent

The goal was never decoration. Large trees in a terminal environment carry a different weight than accent plantings — they define scale, shape movement, and give passengers an immediate emotional anchor in an otherwise transactional space. The design team’s intent was to create a moment of genuine natural presence: trees that read as real, hold up under the scrutiny of close contact, and perform reliably in a controlled interior environment where live planting is not viable.

Species selection landed on sugar maple for its regional authenticity, its strong silhouette, and the structural character of its branching. The trees needed to feel native to the Northeast — not imported, not generic — and to hold their own within a terminal designed to make a statement.

Challenges

Defining the trees precisely enough to build them.

Even after the project had design approval, significant work remained before fabrication could begin. Species, sizing, bark texture, foliage character, and base attachment method all required resolution. The team worked closely with the design and engineering contacts to close out the spec — issuing additional detail sheets, confirming the sugar maple target, and aligning on attachment approach before production could move forward.

Translating the concept into something buildable.

Once the design intent was locked, the challenge shifted to constructability. The planter and liner conditions at JFK introduced real constraints: the trees could not be bolted to the floor, requiring a gravity base plate strategy sized to support structures of this scale without mechanical anchoring. The team worked through steel tube geometry, vertical configuration, bolt access constraints, branch clearance, liner openings, and phased component delivery — including shipping base plates ahead of the tree structures to accommodate adjacent work on site.

Managing field realities as they emerged.

As with any large-scale transportation project, conditions in the field did not always match the drawings. A height discrepancy at one tree location — caused by misalignment between architectural and landscape drawings and what was actually built — required recalculation and modification. Base plate lead times, anchor coordination, and on-site sequencing were actively managed to keep the project on schedule. The scope also expanded into related groundcover species and fire-retardant finish treatment, positioning the tree installation as part of a fully coordinated interior landscape package.

Conclusion

The JFK Terminal 1 trees represent exactly the kind of problem that artificial botanicals are uniquely equipped to solve. Live trees at this scale, in a climate-controlled terminal, would be logistically untenable — but passengers deserve more than a sterile transit hall. Plantscape’s ThermaLeaf® foliage provides fire-code compliance without sacrificing the density, texture, and realism that make these trees believable at close range. The fabrication process, currently underway, involves every layer of the tree from the structural steel core through bark application and final foliage placement — a level of craft that is rarely visible once a project is complete.