Sun, May 17, 2009 page12

• Empire State Building becomes a green giant

  The site of King Kong’s last stand is being turned into an eco-friendly model skyscraper that its owners hope will influence the way office buildings are built around the world

  • By Sebastian Smith / AFP
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  Changing windows in New York sounds easy — but changing the planet too? That’s the goal at the Empire State Building, where switching windows, all 6,500, is part of a retrofit meant to transform the tower — the scene of King Kong’s last stand in the Hollywood classic — into an eco-friendly model for the world.

  Anthony Malkin, representing the owners, said the multimillion-dollar project — a massive upgrade of heating, cooling and lighting systems — will reduce energy consumption by 38 percent.

  Commercial buildings produce 78 percent of greenhouse emissions in New York, so greening the Empire State Building is a big step.

  

  Paul Rode, chief project manager of the renovation of the Empire State Building, explains the heat control system machinery room located under the building, which will be modernized as part of the renovation project, in New York on Friday last week.

  PHOTO: AFP

  And the idea is that if you can do that in a 1931 Art Deco skyscraper, you can do it anywhere.

  “It has a real rippling effect beyond this building and this city,” said Kathy Baczko at the Clinton Climate Initiative, part of former US president Bill Clinton’s foundation, which is backing the project. “It’s a new beacon for how you can be energy efficient.”

  The retrofit adds US$20 million to the US$500 million cost of a general refurbishment underway at the iconic tower.

  According to planners, full efficiency gains will kick in by 2013, bringing annual savings of US$4.4 million and placing the skyscraper in the top 10 percent of office buildings for greenness.

  Malkin, president of Wien and Malkin, which oversees the building for the owners, including the Malkin family, likes stressing business friendly aspects, including the potential to attract higher-paying tenants.

  TREE HUGGER

  He talked passionately about preventing global warming from turning the world to “toast,” but bristled during an interview at being seen as a tree hugger.

  “It’s not about greening,” said Malkin, 46, whose office carpet, shirt and even tie all happened to be various shades of green. “This is sound business. That’s what this is about.”

  What makes the project new, organizers say, is a holistic approach that seeks causes of problems — for example variation in office temperature — as well as solutions.

  “People have looked at specific technologies, the lighting, or the heating, but not at the building as a whole,” said Paul Rode, a project executive with the engineering company Johnson Controls.

  This analysis took 18 months, in which 65 areas were modeled and eight were chosen as targets for the retrofit, ranging from better insulated windows to occupancy sensors for lights.

  The Empire State Building is most famous for being tall, a soaring, tapering stack of 102 floors ending with a multi-colored, illuminated spire.

  But Rode says the remake starts underground in the cavernous and wasteful chiller plant, which he describes as “a time warp.”

  “Everything you see,” he said, pointing to a wall covered with archaic-looking control dials and red lamps, “is going into that” — a single desktop, flat-screen computer.

  That software, as well as hardware like new motors and compressors, will bring sophistication to a system currently churning out heat and cold with little regard to actual demand.

  INNOVATION

  Up on the 62nd floor, looking down on the toy-like Manhattan and Hudson River, Rode explained how new windows will complement that newly intelligent system.

  “The first thing we noticed was that 6,500 windows provided a lot of light, but also heat,” he said.

  The current windows are double-glazed. Each will be removed and given a third film, with layers of argon/krypton gas and microscopic aluminum to provide insulation and repel ultra-violet sun rays.

  “We want to let in the visible light, but not the heat-producing, non-visible rays,” Rode said.

  A former nuclear engineer on navy ships, Rode said he was initially unexcited by the idea of working on an office building.

  But the tower presents “very novel complexities” that have captured his imagination.

  One of them is performing this top-to-bottom rejuvenation without changing the appearance of the historic building — or getting in the way of 10,500 tenants and almost 4 million annual tourists.

  “It’s like changing the black-and-white TV into a color TV, but have it look exactly the same — except for the picture — and all while people are still watching,” he said.

  GAME OVER

  Surveying the Empire State Building from the terrace at his nearby office, Malkin said the elegant skyscraper was “a big lab, a big test bench” for reducing the carbon footprint of older office buildings everywhere.

  “Every single thing was done with the understanding that it has to be part of a replicable process,” Malkin said.

  And if the world ignores that challenge?

  “Then it’s game over,” Malkin said.
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