Greening NYC

Hello All,
Global Green's website has been a bit slow at putting up interesting news so I wanted to comment on this article from The New York Times regarding NYC's goal to become more energy efficient. It starts by describing an adaptive reuse like project, the Hearst Tower which is the first skyscraper to be built since September 11th. It is surprisingly the cities first green commercial building, earning a LEED gold certification. Since the Hearst Tower nearly every new commercial project in the city has been LEED certified. The article then describes how city officials are troubled by the poor energy performance of old/historic existing structures. Thousands of existing structures need to be upgraded with better insulation and mechanical systems (future career opportunities). Four new bills have been set in motion to revise codes related to retrofitting existing buildings. There has been much red tape however and a review of the 111 or so new/modified codes will take some time. This article is important to us as young architects as much of our future work will be adaptive reuse (I am not in the 601 adaptive reuse studio or anything.....).

-Nick

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/04/05/05greenwire-nyc-begins-hard-long-slog-to-energy-efficiency-78815.html?pagewanted=2