#9. Bank of America Tower
Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park | Cook + Fox Architects [HD]
Designed by New York-based Cook + Fox, the conceptualization behind the sleek volume, which rises gracefully from its base at One Bryant Park, is rooted in ideas of biophilia — the innate relationship between nature and man. Constructed to respectively take its spot as the second tallest building in NYC [soon to be the third after the Freedom Tower and the Empire State Building], the sustainable tower marks the first LEED Platinum commercial skyscraper in the world. Check out this short click featuring Principal Richard Cook as he offers a deeper explaination of how biophilia informed not only the formal attitude of the architecture, but also shaped the experiences and atmosphere of this 2,200,000 sqf skyscraper.
Bank of America Tower Location: New York, NY Architect: Cook+Fox Architects Year: 2009
Speaking of green, the new Bank of America Tower is the most energy efficient office tower ever constructed. That is a top 10 achievement. Suck it, hippies!
Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park is a 1,200 ft (366 m) skyscraper in the Midtown district of Manhattan in New York City, in the United States. It is located on Sixth Avenue, between 42nd and 43rd Streets, opposite Bryant Park.
The Bank of America Tower, with its spire, as viewed from the New York Public Library.
The US$1 billion project was designed by COOKFOX Architects, to be one of the most efficient and ecologically friendly buildings in the world. It is the third tallest building in New York City, after One World Trade Center and the Empire State Building, and the fifth tallest building in the United States. Construction was completed in 2009.
In October 2009, the building featured on episode 100 of the National Geographic Channel television series MegaStructures.
In June 2010, the Bank of America Tower was the recipient of the 2010 Best Tall Building Americas award by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.
Details
The tower from street level
The tower’s architectural spire is 255.5 ft (77.9 m) tall and was placed on December 15, 2007. The building is 55 stories high and contains 2,100,000 square feet (195,096 m2) of office space, three escalators and a total of 52 elevators manufactured by Schindler Group – 50 to serve the offices and one leading to the transit mezzanine below ground. Several buildings were demolished to make way for the tower. Among them was the Hotel Diplomat, a 13-story structure which occupied the site at 108 West 43rd Street since 1911, and Henry Miller’s Theatre, which was rebuilt and reopened under its previous location. The building’s tenants include Bank of America as the anchor tenant and Marathon Asset Management, and the tower’s platinum LEED rating and modern column-free office space has helped to entice tenants from all over the city. The Bank of America Tower is considered a worldwide model for green architecture in skyscrapers. The building is sometimes referred to as The BOAT. (Bank Of America Tower).
Environmental Features
The design of the building makes it environmentally friendly, using technologies such as floor-to-ceiling insulated glazing to contain heat and maximize natural light, and an automatic daylight dimming system. The tower also features a greywater system, which captures rainwater for reuse. Bank of America states that the building is made largely of recycled and recyclable materials. Air entering the building is filtered, as is common, but the air exhausted is cleaned as well. Bank of America Tower is the first skyscraper designed to attain a Platinum LEED Certification.
The Bank of America Tower under construction in October 2007.
The Bank of America tower is constructed using a concrete manufactured with slag, a byproduct of blast furnaces. The mixture used in the tower concrete is 55% cement and 45% slag. The use of slag cement reduces damage to the environment by decreasing the amount of cement needed for the building, which in turn lowers the amount of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas produced through the normal cement manufacturing process. Each ton of regular cement produced creates about one ton of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Temperature control and the production of some of its energy are accomplished in an environmentally friendly manner for the tower. Insulated glazing reduces thermal loss, lowering energy consumption and increasing transparency. Carbon dioxide sensors signal increased fresh air ventilation when elevated levels of carbon dioxide are detected in the building.
Conditioned air for the occupants is provided by multiple air column units located in the tenant space that deliver 50 °F air into a raised access floor plenum. This underfloor air system provides users with the ability to control their own space temperature as well as improving the ventilation effectiveness. When building churn occurs, workstation moves can be performed more easily with lower cost and less product waste.
The cooling system produces and stores ice during off-peak hours, and allows the ice to melt to help cool the building during peak load, similar to the ice batteries in the 1995 Hotel New Otani in Tokyo, Japan. Ice batteries have been used since absorption chillers first made ice commercially available 150 years ago, before the invention of the electric light bulb.
Water conservation features in the tower include waterless urinals, which are estimated to save 8,000,000 US gal (30,000,000 l) of water per year and reduce CO2 emissions by 144,000 lb (65,000 kg) per year (as calculated with the Pacific Institute water-to-air model). The tower has a 4.6-megawatt cogeneration plant, which provides part of the base-load energy requirements. Onsite power generation reduces the significant electrical transmission losses that are typical of central power production plants.
In June 2008, the New York Academy of Sciences launched a podcast which highlights these green features.
Height
When comparing building height, only the structural height is used according to rules and regulations of the World Council on Tall Buildings. Currently, the New York Times Building and the Chrysler Building are tied for the position of the third tallest buildings in New York City. With the architectural spire included, the structural height of the Bank of America Tower is 1,200 ft (370 m), making it the third tallest building in New York City (after One World Trade Center and the Empire State Building).
| Building Name |
Architectural Height |
Roof Height |
|---|---|---|
| One World Trade Center | 1,776 ft (541 m) | 1,368 ft (417 m) |
| Empire State Building | 1,472 ft (449 m) | 1,250 ft (380 m) |
| Bank of America Tower | 1,200 ft (370 m) | 953.5 ft (290.6 m) |
| Chrysler Building | 1,046 ft (319 m) | 925 ft (282 m) |
| New York Times Building | 1,046 ft (319 m) | 748 ft (228 m) |
A formal ruling by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has been released, confirming this.
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Height comparison of the Empire State Building (right), Bank of America Tower (center), and the Chrysler Building (left).
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Height comparison to Bank of America Tower (center).
