Built to Be Green, But Already Dated
One Vanderbilt, a new skyscraper in the heart of Manhattan, seems to be reaching for the future. One of the world’s tallest buildings, it pierces the sky like an inverted icicle and fuses seamlessly with an expanding network of trains and other transport at its foundations.
It is also the rare skyscraper designed with climate change in mind. It holds a self-contained, catastrophe resilient power plant capable of generating as much energy as six football fields of solar panels. The building captures every drop of rain that falls on it, and reuses that runoff to heat or cool its 9,000 daily visitors.
“It’s a commercial-grade science project,” said Jonathan Wilcox, a director at SL Green Realty Corp., the company that owns it.
But One Vanderbilt, which opened in late 2020, is already out of date.
Some of the building’s green features were the right answer to the climate problem in 2016, when design work was completed. “And then the answer changed,” Mr. Wilcox said.
Unlike many skyscrapers, One Vanderbilt generates much of its own electricity. However, its turbines burn natural gas, which is cleaner than oil or coal but is falling from favor — particularly in New York City, which in recent years has adopted some of the most ambitious climate laws in the world, including a ban on fossil fuels in new buildings.
Although One Vanderbilt went up in three years, which is relatively quickly, the city’s environmental strategy raced forward.
The building, which has 73 floors, plus an area on top with bars and observation decks, was 20 years in the making and sits just west of Grand Central Terminal. It has gotten acclaim, thanks in part to a popular viewing platform and the transformation of a congested block of Vanderbilt Avenue into a car-free pedestrian plaza.
On the roof, cooling towers evaporate warm water pumped 400 meters skyward, discharging a haze. After losing its heat, the water is sent back downward to cool machinery dozens of floors below.
One Vanderbilt, according to its owner, is designed to be more energy-efficient than most new buildings. The structure features several design elements, some exorbitantly expensive, to minimize energy use, such as high ceilings to let in more natural light.
One striking aspect of One Vanderbilt is its storm water reclamation system. All the rain that touches the skyscraper’s terra-cotta and glass facade is transferred to a pair of giant concrete bathtubs and pumped to the cooling towers above.
Some runoff is evaporated, but much is used to cool the building’s power plant or is recirculated throughout the building. None has been released into the sewer system, which can be overwhelmed by heavy rainfall.
One Vanderbilt’s power plant creates electricity as well as hot water. The generators are hidden 39 floors in the sky, in a windowless room that contains a shipping container-size box holding a microturbine — effectively, a jet engine. A control panel showed it spinning at 61,000 revolutions per minute. Five more turbines throbbed nearby. Colorful pipes snaked off in every direction.
The building’s efficiency has helped One Vanderbilt fill a wall with sustainability awards. Still, the pace of change has accelerated.
“This building is clearly a showpiece,” said Richard Leigh, a professor of physics at Pratt Institute in New York. “The question is what it’s putting out in the way of emissions.”
Landlords say New York City’s new laws will force drastic changes. One of the key laws, which restricts pollution, does not merely apply to new construction: All existing buildings must gradually comply and retrofit as well, potentially at eye-watering cost.
For now, the future of New York’s office towers can be seen at 270 Park, a halffinished behemoth rising a few blocks north of One Vanderbilt. It will have no gas line at all.
Meantime, One Vanderbilt has welcomed its new tenants. An expanded transit hub recently opened next door, while the building’s turbines twirl.
Will those turbines eventually end up being replaced with something else? “To be determined,” Mr. Wilcox said.
A skyscraper that is sustainable, except for the natural gas.