Rick Cook is one of the top green architects around. He and his partner, Bob Fox, designed the truly extraordinary Bank of America Tower, the most sustainable office building in the world today and one of the most aesthetically impressive to boot. (It’s also the second tallest building in New York City now.)
The BofA Tower has the highest LEED certification attainable from the US Green Building Council: Platinum. LEED judges a number of key factors in the design, construction and operation of a building. These include energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.
I interviewed Bob Fox a couple of months ago for a writing project I’m on and was working away today on the green building section of the project. Suffice it to say, the BofA Tower is a stunning example of all the things we can do right – and should do – in our building and urban planning.
Paul Goldberger is the architecture critic of The New Yorker. He has a wonderfully lucid interview with Cook on sustainable buildings, nature and architecture, and the LEED “debate.” (By the way, I wrote about “biophilic design” last Fall after hearing one of Cook and Fox’s associates, Bob Browning, talk about it at the Urban Green Expo.)
Enjoy this interview. It’s heady stuff, from a guy who’s both a visionary and remarkably grounded.
