Sustainability And The Highrise

Sustainability and highrise construction appears as a topic in a number of recent publications.

Innovation, a November 2004 supplement to Architectural Record magazine, is devoted to highrise design and includes considerations of sustainability from a variety of perspectives:

In lead editorial Aiming High, Robert Ivy discusses Norman Foster and Partner's new Swiss Re building (also known as 30 St. Mary Axe). Foster's building uses a dual-glazed skin to convert convective air flow into power, heat, and lighting for the building interior. As air within the curtainwall sandwich is warmed by solar heat gain and rises, it is captured by various mechanical systems and then turned into useful energy and heating.

In Do skyscrapers still make sense? the relationship of highrises to revived downtowns and the urban business environment is discussed:

_Three years after the attacks on the World Trade Center Towers, financial firms for the most part have decided to remain located in New York City's financial district, despite the costs. The benefits of the "human network"--face-to-face, close, personal interaction--outweigh the location's higher costs and risks.

_European cities are losing their traditional resistance to highrise development, recognizing the amenity and economic efficiency this building type can offer. London's new towers are characterized as modestly proportioned so as to minimize casting shadows on neighboring areas, and sustainably designed with daylighting, informal spaces for impromptu meetings, and individually controlled natural ventilation.

_Holistic approaches to building physics, more common in Europe than the US, use air buoyancy effects, diurnal temperature cycles, natural ventilation, breathable skins, localized control of heating and cooling, and passive shading to strategically reduce building energy requirements. Systems that rely less on mass air movement than traditional HVAC approaches can also result in reduced floor-to-floor heights bringing additional economies.

The thrust of this article is perhaps best summed up by Craig Schwitter, structural engineer with Buro Happold in New York, quoted as saying, "I don't believe the challenges are in making towers bigger, but more livable."

In Green grows up...and up and up and up the recent surge in design of green highrises for New York City is discussed, including projects such as:

• _Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Fox & Fowle Architect's New York Times Tower
• _Cook + Fox Architect's One Bryan Park
• _Foster and Partner's Hearst Tower
• _SOM's Freedom Tower (in regard to the proposed wind turbines)
• _Cesar Pelli & Associate's  211 Murray Street residential building

Numerous sustainable design strategies are discussed, such as passive solar screens, daylighting, rainwater collection and reuse, underfloor air distribution, cogeneration, photovoltaics, adaptive reuse of existing building shells, slab-integrated cooling and heating, and more.

Building Safety Bulletin's High-Efficiency High-Rise Breaks Ground (November 2004) discusses New York City's Bank of America Tower, the first US highrise aiming for USGBC Platinum LEED rating. Sustainable technologies include double-wall skin, translucent insulating glazing, natural daylighting, automatic dimming of artificial lighting, planted green roof, on site cogeneration, ice-based thermal storage, underfloor HVAC with individual floor air handling units, and more.

New Yorker Magazine's Green Manhattan (October 18, 2004) is a highly readable article espousing the green benefits of living in Manhattan. The short story: If Manhattan were the fifty-first state, it would be the country's 12th largest based on population, but its energy use on a per capita basis would be the lowest of all. Read the article to learn more :)