Designing Light and Air

When the Bank of America Tower opens in midtown Manhattan later this year, it will be a beacon of green. Its design is likely to earn the highest LEED rating—platinum—from the U.S. Green Building Council, making it the most sustainable skyscraper in the country. The building's developer, the Durst Organization and Bank of America, favored green principles in the design. Architect Rick Cook, of Cook+Fox, talked to NEWSWEEK about the innovative features of the 55-story glass-and-steel office tower—and about why concern about the environment is central to his practice.

NEWSWEEK: What got you so involved in green design?
Cook: It was actually our twin 6-year-old boys who were the conversion experience. My wife and I adopted our boys from Cambodia, and we think of our family as global citizens. In the U.S., we're using five times the world's resources, given our population, and if rapidly urbanizing countries such as China continue to increase their consumption of resources, it's a completely nonsustainable pattern.

What makes the Bank of America Tower sustainable?
It will save about half the energy that most buildings its size would use. But the real story is in terms of health, productivity and light—what we like to call "biophilia," a term coined by E. O. Wilson. People feel better when they feel connected to nature. So we've created naturally lit environments, and fresh air of as high a quality as possible, with underfloor air-delivery systems so people can control the air at their workstations.

Can you open the windows?
In New York City, there is a very high degree of particulates in the air: we filter out 95 percent of particulates, so the cleanest way to bring in fresh air is to deliver filtered air.

What about saving water?
One thing we're having is waterless urinals. I did the math—and that one gesture saves 3 million gallons of water a year. That's the equivalent of 22 million of those little water bottles which, if you laid them end to end, would stretch from New York to San Diego.

Nowadays, it seems "green" is being used as a marketing tool for new development.
We call it "greenwashing," the way some people use it as a sales tool without any integrity behind it. And that bothers me. But it's been amazing to watch so many people get interested in the real issues. When we first presented the design of this building in 2003, the No. 1 question we were asked was how much more does a building like this cost? Now the No. 1 question from audiences is, what can I do in my own life to live more sustainably? The world has changed very rapidly, with the U.N. climate-change report and Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."