Greener Offices in New York
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA 
on 04.17.06
Last week, we brought you a primer on making office interiors a greener place; now the NY Times has a good profile of two new office buildings (and a third going up) that are helping make office exteriors greener. Seven World Trade Center, a 52-story, $7 million replacement for the building that fell at that address on 9/11, was LEED-certified last month, and the 46-story Hearst Tower, on 57th Street near Eighth Avenue, is expected to follow suit after completion next month. The third building, the Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Place, has been touted as the "greenest skyscraper ever," though we can't be sure until it's completed. Some interesting tidbits include the assertion that the cost of sustainable design have decreased to the point of being just two to five percent higher than designs that don't incorporate sustainability. The same sustainable buildings also use 30 to 70 percent less energy, so they cost less both in operating costs and in employee costs; better health leads to fewer sick days and increased productivity on the job. Let's see: save money, save resources, save energy, increase production, reduce sickness; is there anything green building can't do? via ::NY Times
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I assume that the NYT article has a typo and thus Seven World Trade Center did not just cost 7 million to build - most McMansions cost 500k to build and this is a 52-story tower in the middle of manhatten (making construction more difficult and thus more expensive). (Yes I am factoring out land costs)
Green LEED building is all well and good, but what needs to be focused on is RECYCLING and power storage. My office building does not recycle (I carry home my recycables...) and nor to many others I have been too. People in NYC who live there have to recycle or face fines, but large office blocks don't? That is a bit hypocritical!
7 Million is probably just the Architect fees.
There's currently a green skyscraper exhibit up through June at the Skyscraper Museum in lower Manhattan, where you can see display models of these (and other) NY green buildings. If you're not in NYC, their website has info about these green skyscrapers.
Previous TH post about the exhibit.
Jess-
The LEED system requires a recycling system as a prerequisite for certification. Any project that is LEED certified must at a minimum have storage and a sytem for recycling cans, bottles, paper and cardboard.
LEED also requires buildings or offices to meet energy usage restrictions that are beyond what is current marketplace standards, as a prerequisite. In addition, more intensive energy savings results in more points.
In the specific case of this building, there is a very sophisticated system that generates electricity off peak, and also composts the paper waste.
Entilely glazed green skyscrapers? How on earth does that make them green? Glass is a terrible insulator. Current legislation (building Regulation Pt LII) in UK make glass buildings virtually impossible unless very very high spec glass is used and then the transport energy use in making and coating this glass is huge. These 'superstar' Architects who maintain that their buildings are the 'greenest' yet might do well in showing the operational costs in cooling/heating their buildings before making such claims. Making a 'green' building requires so much more that simply environmental issues and must look at Social, economic and transport issues. LEED seems to be a very diluted system if these big buildings can pass them. An interesting comparison would be to assass them inder UK BRE's Environmental Assessment Method and see if these buildings manage an Excellent rating