The Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park is a 1,200 ft (366 m) skyscraper under construction in the Midtown Manhattan district of New York City, in the United States. The US$ 1 billion project is located on Sixth Avenue, between 42nd and 43rd Street, opposite Bryant Park. It has been designed by Cook+Fox Architects and Gensler to be one of the most efficient and ecologically friendly buildings in the world. Construction is expected to be complete in 2009.^[2] As its name indicates, Bank of America will be its anchor tenant.

The tower reached its maximum height on 15 December 2007 when the final portion of the spire was put in place.

Details

The tower's architectural spire is 255.5 ft (77.9 m) tall. The building will be 54 stories high and will have 2,100,000 square feet (195,096 m²) of office space. Upon the placement of its spire in December 2007, the tower became the second tallest building in New York City, after the Empire State Building. The building will have three escalators and a total of 53 elevators – 52 to serve the offices and one leading to the transit mezzanine below ground.^[1]

Several buildings were demolished to make way for the tower.

Environmental features

The design of the building will make it environmentally friendly, using technologies such as floor-to-ceiling insulating glass to contain heat and maximize natural light, and an automatic daylight dimming system. The tower also features a greywater system, which captures rainwater and reuses it. Bank of America also states that the building will be made largely of recycled and recyclable materials.^[3] Air entering the building will be filtered, as is common, but the air exhausted will be cleaned as well.^[4] Bank of America Tower is the first skyscraper designed to attain a Platinum LEED Certification.^[3]

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 normal cement manufacturing. (One ton of cement produced emits about one ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.)^[5]

Control of the temperature of Bank of America's tower, and the production of some of its energy, will be done in an environmentally-friendly manner. Insulating glass will reduce thermal loss somewhat, which will lower energy consumption and increase transparency. Carbon dioxide sensors will 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 62 degree 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 easier with lower cost and less product waste.

The cooling system will produce and store ice during off-peak hours, and then use ice phase transition to help cool the building during peak load, similar to the ice batteries in the 1995 Hotel New Otani in Tokyo, Japan.^[6] Ice batteries have been used since absorption chillers first made ice commercially 150 years ago, before the electric light bulb was invented.^[7]

Water conservation features in the tower include waterless urinals, which are estimated to save 8 million gallons of water per year and reduce CO2 emissions by 144,000 pounds per year (as calculated with the Pacific Institute water-to-air model^[8]).

The tower has a 4.6-megawatt cogeneration plant, which will provide 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.^[9]

Height

When comparing building height, only the structural height is used, according to rules and regulations of the World Council on Tall Buildings.^[10] It is debatable as to whether what is being called an architectural spire^[11] will count toward the structural height. Currently, the New York Times Building and the Chrysler Building are tied for the position of the third tallest buildings in New York City. Comparing the Bank of America Tower to the Chrysler Building, the Bank of America Tower is taller when considering two factors:

A formal ruling by the World Council on Tall Buildings has yet to be released.

Construction Incidents

Since 2006, material has fallen from the building at least six times.

October 17, 2007 - A construction container fell from a crane around 1 p.m., causing damage to the tower and injuring eight people on the sidewalk.^[12] The container broke windows on several floors of the building, spraying debris that rained down on the streets below. Eight people suffered cuts and bruises. The Buildings Department temporarily stopped construction at the site.
November 6, 2007 - Two construction containers fell from a crane around 6 p.m., causing damage to the tower and injuring 20 people on the sidewalk.^[13] The container broke windows on several floors of the building, spraying debris that rained down on the streets below. Twenty people suffered cuts and bruises. The Buildings Department temporarily stopped construction at the site.
August 12, 2008 - A 1,500-pound (680 kg) glass panel fell onto a sidewalk.^[14]
September 17, 2008 - A debris container felI, shattered a panel of glass facade, and caused several pieces of glass to fall from the 50th floor to the sidewalk/street (West 42nd and Sixth Avenue) around 3PM. No one was injured. ^[15]

References

External links

• Bank of America press release on the tower
• The Durst Organization press release on the tower
• Cook+Fox Architects
• Emporis entry
• Wirednewyork.com site photos
• New York Academy of Sciences podcast
• The Site Selection report on the tower
• The Bank of America - Megastructure at One Bryant Park