The Connecticut Business and Industry Association’s Green Building Forum 2005 was held at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford.
Bank of America’s new skyscraper at One Bryant Park in New York’s Manhattan section may have a budget most small businesses can’t even fathom, but many characteristics of the building – which, when it’s done, may be the most environmentally friendly in the country – can be used on even the tiniest of projects, according to its architect, Bob Fox of New York City-based Cook + Fox.
And incorporating “green” elements into any new building may help stave off the global warming that many scientists say contributed to the ferocity of recent hurricanes Katrina and Rita, presenters told an assembly of architects, engineers and businesspeople at the Connecticut Business and Industry Association’s Green Building Forum 2005. The event was held last week at the Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford – the first museum in the country to receive the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.
But green building hasn’t been universally accepted by businesses. Part of that is because attached to it is the stigma of “tree-hugging hippies,” as state Rep. Michael Caron, R-Plainfield, told the crowd. So Caron, a green building advocate, refers to it as “high-efficiency, high-performance building.” And as gas prices hover around the $3 mark after the hurricanes, one of the biggest reasons to build green is because it saves money in resources, he said.
There is a paradigm shift occurring with rising gas prices, according to Donald Harwood, associate director of operations for Bristol-Myers Squibb. Pharmaceutical companies like Bristol-Myers are among those leading the way in green building.
After years of reasonable gas prices, heating a building is becoming increasingly expensive.
“Now we’re going to be forced to think about the challenges,” Harwood said.
Bank of America’s new building will save the bank money on several fronts, including heating costs, Fox told the crowd.
Energy consumption in the United States has contributed to increased costs. The United States has 4.6 percent of the world’s population, but consumes 25.2 percent of its resources, Fox said. And as far as global warming goes, buildings account for 43 percent of the carbon dioxide mankind releases into the environment.
“We have to think a little differently,” he said.
A Helpful ‘Problem’
And the design of Bank of America’s new Manhattan building will be the result of thinking differently. The building is “an architect’s dream project,” Fox said. The bank gave the architects and engineers carte blanche to make the building as green as possible. The goals of the design are to attract and retain as many quality employees as possible, and to minimize the building’s impact on its surrounding environment.
The architects and engineers behind the project looked at the elements at their disposal.
One was the sun. The building, which will be the second tallest in Manhattan, will have a crystalline tower with floor-to-ceiling, mostly transparent glass. The glass is clear in the middle, and becomes progressively more opaque toward the bottom and the top. The design is intended to let in as much sunlight as possible, and the opaqueness at the top and bottom will help keep in heat.
The designers considered the wind, but found that a wind turbine on the roof would not create enough power to make it worth it.
But the rain that will fall on the site will be usable. In New York City, whenever there is a major rain event the storm sewers tend to overflow, which leads to sewage runoff into the Hudson River. But One Bryant Park, which gets 4 feet of rain a year, will not contribute to that. All of the rain that falls on the site will be collected and filtered into huge holding tanks, where it will be treated and used, along with the water from sinks, which will be recycled and used to flush toilets and for the cooling tower.
The building, which is at the lowest point for several blocks, also will use the groundwater that collects under the site. Left as is, the abundance of groundwater that collects from surrounding sites could have turned into a flooding problem. But the building will capture it and put it into tanks. Since the temperature of the groundwater is 57 or 58 degrees, it will used for heating and cooling the building.
“We’re going to do all the heating and cooling in this bank with this ‘problem,'” Fox said.
The building will run with half the water of a typical building its size. And, aside from not having to pay for as much water, the utility will provide a further savings because of the benefit to the environment.
The building is getting a myriad of incentives from New York state and the city. Many cities, states and utility companies across the country provide such incentives, panelists told the crowd.
The new Bank of America building also will be about 50 percent more efficient than a typical building its size. When electricity reaches a building by normal means of transmission, 73 percent of the energy leaks out before it reaches the place where it is to be used. But the BofA building will have its own co-generation plant onsite, which will power the building 70 percent of the time and will be supplemented by traditional power during peak hours of the day. The power generated onsite also will be 77 percent usable.
At night, when the power isn’t necessary to run the computers and lights in the rest of the building, it will be used to freeze some of the huge tanks of collected water. The ice will then be broken up and used to supplement the air condition.
The building also is using renewable materials. The ceiling of the bank lobby on the first floor will be made entirely of bamboo, a rapidly renewable wood. The counters in the bathrooms will be made by a Brooklyn company that uses grounded-up recycled glass and sand to make countertops.
Some of the innovations in the new building might seem foreign and complicated, but Fox told the crowd in Hartford that everything he mentioned could be used in a building constructed by a small or medium-sized company.
Several panelists said that one of the keys to successful green building is proper planning and recognition of the incentives that can help defray the initial cost of some of the pieces.
“Don’t forget the opportunities that exist outside of your framework,” noted Harwood.
Organizations like the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund offer some and tax breaks are sometimes available to raise the internal rate of return.
And John Boyer, executive director of the Mark Twain House Museum, said that after going though the LEED certification process himself, it is best to start the process at the beginning of planning.
