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Deconstructing ’green’ skyscrapers |
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Written by Alexander Provan, asap
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Saturday, 17 March 2007 |
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On a frigid afternoon in early March, construction workers pinned steel columns to expansive girders 30 stories above Bryant Square Park, building what will be the new Bank of America tower. From the outside, the skyscraper looks little different from the others that surround it.
But inside, crews are installing an array of energy saving, pollution-fighting features that will make it arguably the world’s greenest skyscraper. The building is the first to have obtained a platinum certification from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), whose rating system sets the benchmark for green buildings in the U.S.
The windows, bank executive Mark Nicholls explains, are made from “low iron” glass, which lets in more natural light than normal glass and will lower the building’s use of electricity. Inside, an innovative underfloor climate system will allow workers to control the temperature of their workspace.
“Two-thirds of the calls I get are ’I’m too hot’ or ’I’m too cold,”’ says Nicholls, the bank’s Senior Vice President and Global Workplace Executive. The new system will replace conventional pressurized air ducts, which are inefficient and can harbor germs.
According to Ed Mazria, an architect who founded the green advocacy organization Architecture 2030 a year ago, the building sector is responsible for almost half of worldwide energy consumption and thirty percent of carbon dioxide emissions, the largest contributor to global warming.
“It’s widely accepted now that the building sector is part of the problem and, more and more, we’re also part of the solution,” he said.
Green buildings are sprouting up around the country. New York City’s first green skyscraper, 7 World Trade Center, achieved a gold LEED rating by recycling steel from the previous building and using rainwater for cooling. LEED has certified over 20 buildings in Chicago, more than any other city. Meanwhile, The California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture has developed an organic defense against earthquakes, fires and floods: Superadobe, bags of stabilized earth layered with barbed wire.
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GLOOM AND DOOM?
At a recent Architecture 2030 panel in New York entitled The 2010 Imperative:
Global Emergency Teach-In, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, asserted, “We can avoid dangerous climate change. So it’s not a gloom and doom story.” Over 250,000 people watched the event live via Webcast, and as many have watched it since. While panelists noted innovations being made in the building sector, Hansen also warned, “If we don’t begin to take the actions now, it will become a gloom and doom story.”
A New Mexico resident, Mazria took a hiatus from three decades of practicing architecture to spearhead Architecture 2030 and has traveled around the country to tout his Climate Action Plan. To ease the building sector’s impact on the environment, Mazria proposed steps to reduce the amount of fossil fuel used in new buildings and renovations. He says they could immediately consume half the energy and by 2030 be carbon-neutral.
Many of the architectural and design techniques that make were pioneered during the energy crises of the 1970s.
“I think it’s going to take some controls and incentives” in order for his plan to be successful, Mazria forecasts. The federal government does not currently offer tax breaks to builders that achieve LEED certification. “If you’re cutting your energy costs and you’re cutting your greenhouse gas emissions, there’s not much of a downside. But if you provide incentives it will push the building sector in that direction before it’s too late.”
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IMPROVING ON NATURE
When it came to designing the new Bank of America building, Nicholls said, “We thought, ’We can afford to make a contribution.”’ It is estimated that implementing the innovations required to achieve a platinum LEED rating add a five percent premium to the cost of construction, but that money is recouped in five years.
However, Rick Cook, whose Cook+Fox firm designed the $1.3 billion building, suggests there is a pervasive myth that the premium is closer to fifteen or twenty percent, which has discouraged the widespread use of green technologies.
Nicholls acknowledges that, beyond eco-friendliness, he is very concerned with making the Bank of America a more attractive place to work. “We’re in the pure intellectual capital business,” where a company’s success is determined by its ability to “win the war for talent,” he explains. Along with reducing environmental impact or winning points with socially conscious prospective employees, the design of the building aims to increase the happiness and productivity of the existing work force.
Bank of America’s building will have transparent workspace walls, sensors that adjust the brightness of a room according to motion and natural light, and oxygen sensors that fill stuffy meeting rooms with fresh air. The building will recycle water waste and produce ice in the evening to avoid straining the A/C system during hot days, when energy use and prices peak.
An efficient 5.1-megawatt power plant housed in the building will contribute to energy savings of $4 million a year, but Cook avows, “Everyone will tell you, recruitment and retention of employees is more important.” A one percent gain in productivity in the new building would equal three times the annual energy savings.
Excitedly, Nicholls extols the benefits of the tower’s air filtration system: the air leaving the building will be cleaner than when it entered. I suggest that the building will work better than trees. “I would never argue against God,” Nicholls chuckles, “but we’re discharging the cleanest air in New York.”
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asap contributor Alexander Provan is a freelance writer. | Only registered users can write comments.
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