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Another Green Skyscraper Rises in NYC

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42nd Street and Times Square seem an unlikely place for green buildings, but the new Bank of America Tower will rise next door to the world’s first green skyscraper, 4 Times Square. The Bank of America (BAC) and Durst Organization are co-developing a 2.1 million-square-foot tower at One Bryant Park on West 42nd Street. BAC will be the tower’s primary tenant, occupying about half the building for its New York headquarters. The tower is expected to create thousands of new construction-related jobs in midtown and expand the boundaries of green development. “More than 500 professionals and staff from 70 consulting and professional firms and five law firms have been going full speed on this project for many months, working 60-hour weeks in some cases,” Douglas Durst noted. The architectural firm of Cook + Fox designed One Bryant Park. The 51-story skyscraper will go beyond the green construction features of 4 Times Square, including a variety of leading-edge techniques, from water conservation using rain runoff and gray water recycling, to wind turbines and co-generation of power and cooling. Demolition of the 22-story building presently on the site is expected to begin in spring 2004. Bank of America will move in early […]

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Short Reviews of Some Recently Released Books

Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress & a Civilization in Troubleby Lester Brown, WW. Norton.Anything Lester Brown writes is important to read. Just as goverments in Africa watched HIV infection rates rise and did little, he writes, the U.S. is watching CO2 levels rise and doing little. We must move beyond timid, incremental actions. Our only hope is change based on market signals that tell the ecological truth. This means restructuring the tax system by lowering income taxes and raising taxes on environmentally destructive activities to incorporate ecological costs. Plan B is the only viable option, because Plan A, business as usual, offers an unacceptable outcome.Eco-industrial Strategies: Unleashing Synergy between Economic Development & the Environment Edited by Edward Cohen-Rosenthal, Greenleaf PublishingIt’s nice to see Ed’s work continuing after his tragic death in 2002. Ed was Director of the Work and Environment Initiative at Cornell, a true leader in industrial ecology, and passionate about the environment and the places people work. This book sums up his work, exploring the key issues in eco-industrial development and a compendium of case studies from around the world.Eco-Industrial park (EIP) enthusiasts view industrial parks as dinosaurs of industrial development, which are being replaced by […]

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