I’m not sure how economic it is though. I wonder how long it will take to recoup the costs of construction in saved electricity costs.

Of course not building any structure — right down to a chicken coop or outhouse — has zero environmental consequences, a sort of an environmental equivalent to “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” But turned on its head.

So, I might suggest, having no humans at all be better for the planet. Then we wouldn’t be using *any* natural resources, etc. nor polluting the environment.

I don’t say that to be sarcastic, only to underscore everything involves a trade off. If humanity is to exist, we need buildings. Maybe in the distant future scientists will be able to have their cake and eat it too — buildings with truly zero impact. But given the “inconvenient truth” of the laws of thermodynamics, I can’t imagine how. (And no, I’m not a scientist.)

So, as long as we remained constrained, the best we can do is to seek ever better ways to lessen our impact. Perhaps attaching emotionally-loaded terms such as “good” and “bad” cloud the issue. I prefer to say, “This is less effective than that.” I’ll leave the moral judgment to some diety, my fellow humans, heck, my pet dog.

However, if you’re most comfortable thinking about it in such terms, that’s certainly okay, too — after all, how you assess is your business.

Thank You

I’m not entirely certain about the removal of 30 storeys from a 100-storey tower though – as people have mentioned, those 30 storeys would otherwise be need to be built elsewhere, covering another area of land in what will probably a less central, sustainable location.

I agree with Erik’s post, although I’m afraid my view has always been that humans are inherently greedy and selfish on an individual level as therefore our only hope is for strong leadership. Something we here in the UK don’t appear to have right now: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/13/renewableenergy.energy

I have been involved in human rights and eco-defense as well as design for waaaaayyyyyyy long now, and I am very familiar with the mindset that says “the Earth would be a lot better off without people” (and it could well be true). As a species, we are still pretty new on this planet, and our behaviour reflect that. We are yet in our adolescence, and still have the tendency to do things simply because we can. Seemingly, there is no fast track to wisdom, but we may not make it far enough to achieve that.

What comes into my own mind over and over in different situations, is that Homo sapiens has certain behaviours that may be causing problems for the system at the moment, but seem to be hardwired into us……….so they are not going to change very soon. Maybe instead of blaming ourselves for making such a mess, we should be accepting the fact that we are builders and manipulators of our environment, and learn to do it responsibly and consciously.

What about the idea of buidling to help the rest of the environment? What about building as if we believed we were PART of our own environment, as much as it is a part of us? What if rather than simply hoping to minimise our overall impact, we sought to maximise our positive impact. Sustainability is not just about conservation of what remains, and minimisation of our drain on resources. At this time, we must be repairing as much as possible every step along the way. You know those “R’s”: Reduce, Reuse,Recyle? Let’s add a few more: Respect, Restraint, Rethink, Renew, Restore…Maybe then we will all have a chance at a future which is beyond survival.

Tom, don’t drop out of school, instead work on making things profitable for nature; doctors already do it; they make things, like artificial legs, hearts, etc that are good for our natural bodies.

Currently a not-building is better for the environment than the turbine-building (or most green things out there); but a good-building could be thought of…

Provided you establish that there is, in fact, a need for more office space in a city like London, then sure – you need to build the building.

But that wasn’t my point: my point was that basically any act of (at least modern) architecture, no matter how many wind turbines it has, is worse for the environment than no act of architecture. So we shouldn’t pretend that a steel-intensive high-rise with a few wind turbines up top is good for the environment; it’s just not as bad as it could have been.

Even having said that, though, the reason I made my comment about chopping floors off the building is because reducing this high-rise by ten stories and using less steel could very well have a more positive environmental impact than adding wind turbines will. So a developer who simply shortens his or her buildings could very well have a better environmental record than someone who builds wind turbine-powered high-rises – but there’s not much of a story there, and the photographs aren’t as cool.

So a building that’s short and has no wind turbines – even if it has a more positive environmental impact than a cool-looking tall building with wind turbines – doesn’t get much media attention. And that’s as true on my own website as it is anywhere else – I’m just making the observation.

We ought to be working on learning more about the economies and ecologies of scale in commercial and residential architecture and construction.

The problem is that people can’t live or work in a not-built building.

I agree that high-rise glass and steel towers are like the SUV’s of the building world, but it is pretty cool when you can have one that has the relative footprint of a Honda Civic rather than a Hummer.

A rough calculation suggests that the three wind turbines are enough to supply electricity to at least 100 homes. That’s pretty good, even if the tubines are only for decoration.