Galaxy Digital had reservations. The New York–based company, which specializes in digital assets and blockchain technologies, had found a 36,000-square-foot office in Battery Park City to replace its SoHo headquarters and accommodate rapid growth. Yet while commissioning Young Projects to oversee the new office design and buildout in late 2021, its top executive fretted that moving to a neighborhood associated with investment banking could suggest that Galaxy was just another voice in the crowd, rather than a leader in the emerging business of cryptocurrency.

“Every day we’re not in the bigger space is a day of lost community,” firm founding partner Bryan Young recalls Galaxy founder and CEO Mike Novogratz saying, “but we also need to aim for an excitement that’s unlike a financial institution.” For this reason, the architects began distinguishing Galaxy from its workaday neighbors. Young Projects and its lighting collaborator, fellow Brooklyn-based studio The SEED, were given six weeks to finalize a concept with a completion date of mid-2022.