The rise of the green building

Architecture: New buildings use design and technology to reduce environmental impact, cut costs and provide better places to work

IT IS officially known as the Swiss Re Tower, or 30 St Mary Axe. But Londoners universally refer to the newest addition to their skyline as "the Gherkin", thanks to the 41-storey building's distinctive, curved profile, which actually looks more like a pine cone (see above). What is most remarkable about the building is not its name or its shape, however, but its energy-efficiency. Thanks to its artful design and some fancy technology, it is expected to consume up to 50% less energy than a comparable conventional office building.

Most people are not used to thinking of large buildings as vast, energy-guzzling machines. But that is what they are. In America, buildings account for 65% of electricity consumption, 36% of total energy use and 30% of greenhouse-gas emissions. So making buildings more energy-efficient could have a significant impact on energy policy, notes Rebecca Flora of the Green Building Alliance, a group that promotes sustainable architecture. That is a key goal of the "green architecture" movement, which is changing the way buildings are designed, built and run.

Proponents of green architecture argue that the approach has many benefits. In the case of a large office, for example, the combination of green design techniques and clever technology can not only reduce energy consumption and environmental impact, but also reduce running costs, create a more pleasant working environment, improve employees' health and productivity, reduce legal liability, and boost property values and rental returns.

The term "green architecture" only came into use in the 1990s, but the movement's roots can be traced back a long way. Crystal Palace in London and Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, for example, built in 1851 and 1877 respectively, used roof ventilators and underground air-cooling chambers to regulate the indoor temperature. Today's enthusiasm for green architecture has its origins in the energy crisis of the 1970s, when architects began to question the wisdom of building enclosed glass-and-steel boxes that required massive heating and cooling systems. Early proponents of more energy-efficient architecture included William McDonough, Bruce Fowle and Robert Fox in America, Thomas Herzog in Germany, and Norman Foster and Richard Rogers in Britain.

These forward-thinking...