Manhattan’s density, supported by its mass transit infrastructure, is the principle reason the average New Yorker has a smaller carbon footprint than her counterpart in another large US city. At the scale of the city’s individual buildings, high-rise living and working are made possible by technological factors. And some of the technologies developed for lifting people, water, hot and cool air to great heights currently work in much the same way as they did when initially introduced. How often do we stop to consider the systems required to make a building function?
Urban Omnibus recently spent a day with Jim Ferrari, the chief mechanic of 515 Madison Avenue, a midtown Manhattan office building designed by J.E.R. Carpenter and completed in 1931, to find out more about what exactly goes on behind doors that typically only maintenance workers pass through. What Ferrari revealed was a series of day-to-day systems that many of us — those concerned with the environmental sustainability of our building stock — talk about improving without necessarily being able to visualize.
http://www.vimeo.com/25733822Visit Urban Omnibus, an online project of the Architecture League of New York, to view the City of Systems film series which offers a poetic peek behind the scenes of some of the complex systems that enable New York City to function.
The series is made possible by IBM as part of its commitment to use technology and information to help build more sustainable and intelligent cities.
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POPULAR MYTH: Green buildings cost more. (Hint – they don’t.) If you’re about to stop reading and skip to another article, stick with us – this is a crucial point: green buildings don’t cost more.
Posted by: forex trading strategies and systems
7:35 pm
Nice article vineeta. Nice to see that also old buildings use smart technologies.
Posted by: L.Jordan
2:08 am
NY surely needs smart technologies, cause it is a huge city. Every city with population over 10 million has to apply smart and green technology in some way.
Posted by: kaipnumestisvorio ir geriausios dietos
6:06 pm
Rather than go to the considerable excess expense of a centralized control of every radiator, why not give the user the control by installing something like the Danfoss values and controls on each radiator.
At my suggestion some years ago, a co-op on the Upper West Side which had the sun-facing apartments too hot because the building thermostat was on the cold side, as it must be to assure that side stays warm, these valves were installed in all rooms receiving Winter sun. Fuel saving was enormous.
Posted by: S J McMurray, III