One Bryant Park, a skyscraper at the corner of 42nd Street and 6th Avenue in New York City, has become the first large office building to acquire LEED Platinum certification.
By incorporating green roofs, 600,000 square feet of high performance glass which allows daylight to enter while preventing unwanted heat and a greywater system, the office tower is a good example of sustainable building practices in action.
Tyler Caine, an architect, wrote on his blog “Intercon” about One Bryant Park’s greywater system:
(New York City) … has a Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) system which means that rainfall brings stormwater flowing into the sewage pipes. Even a small amount of rain can cause the sewers to reach capacity and stress the treatment facilities of the city. To relieve the congestion a mixture of rain and raw sewage overflows directly into the Hudson river. Any effort that minimizes the release of sewage or stormwater from a site lowers the risk of environmental damage by CSOs.
One Bryant Park collects every drop of rainwater that falls on its site, nearly 48 inches per year. A series of collection tanks distributed throughout the floors can store over 329,000 gallons of water that is used for irrigating plants and flushing the building’s toilets. But it does not end there. Greywater treatment on the site takes water from the building and treats it for use in the cooling towers that returns water back to the atmosphere in the form of vapor—essentially completing a cycle back to nature.
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