Green is Good

Best Idea

Set foot inside Hearst’s new headquarters just south of Central Park, and you actually might have fantasies of moving in. The ambience is so un-New York: fresh and cool, even on a global-warmed afternoon. A three-story-tall sloping wall of water, fed by stored rainfall, keeps the glass-roofed atrium moist year-round, cooling it during warm months. Thanks to the building’s floor-to-ceiling windows and open-plan construction, natural light washes deep into every floor. And when daylight is abundant, sensors automatically dim the overheads. That has helped slash the power bill by 25%. The Hearst Building (right) has lots of company in this year’s green all-star category, including Adobe’s new Silicon Valley headquarters, Google’s installation of solar panels at its Mountain View (Calif.) headquarters, and the new Bank of America tower in New York. BofA’s glassy wonder, now emerging over Bryant Park, is expected to become the greenest office tower in the U.S., complete with a living green roof and sensors that know when to pump fresh air into stuffy meeting rooms. Healthier workers. Fantasy digs. A smaller contribution to global warming. Green is good.

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