But apparently, skyscrapers can be sustainable environmentally-friendly structures that can actually help conserve and even produce renewable energy, and minimize waste materials through recycling and reuse.
One such skyscraper is the new Hearst Tower in New York, featured in this article. The Hearst Tower, a soaring glass and steel landmark with distinctive triangular frames built on top of an older building, is NY’s first green building incorporating a number of environmentally-friendly features in its design. The building’s structure itself uses 80% recycled steel. To reduce the energy used for air conditioning by 22%, the building uses outside air for heating and cooling and uses a system of polyethylene tubing embedded in the floor filled with circulating water collected from rain at the tower’s roof.
The collected rain water is also used to irrigate plants and for use at a three-story waterfall at the main lobby (which in turn, helps cool down and humidify the lobby). Its unusual triangular framing pattern or diagrid also has a purpose: It helped reduce the amount of steel needed to construct the building by as much as 20% compared to conventional steel frames. Hearst Building is designed to use 25% less energy than the minimum requirements for New York.
I hope more skyscrapers like the Hearst Tower will be built all over the world. Here in the Philippines, I have yet to see a truly energy-efficient skyscraper that uses a number of environmentally-friendly features. In the near future, I’d like to see perhaps a tower with built-in solar panels to capture the energy from the hot tropical sun, or a building equipped with turbines that will harness the wind to produce sustainable energy. I hope our new breed of architects and engineers will also prioritize environmental-friendliness and energy efficiency in their designs.
