by Russell Boniface
Associate Editor

How do you . . . overcome a building’s aged infrastructure to create sustainable design opportunities?

Summary: New York City-based Brennan Beer Gorman Architects/Brennan Beer Gorman Monk Interiors (BBG-BBGM) has recently moved into their new 32,000-square-foot, 25th-floor office space in New York’s iconic Empire State Building, which they recently renovated into a sustainable office habitat. One key feature of the new space is a custom-made chiller installed on the 25th-floor roof setback that provides the firm with its own independent, energy-saving HVAC system. BBG-BBGM is targeting LEED® Silver in the Commercial Interiors category for its design. If certified, the firm would become the first tenant to achieve this rating at the 102-story Empire State Building.

The BBG-BBGM office suite, designed for an architecture firm and an interior design firm, now offers an energy-efficient, loft-style space. The building’s 77-year-old infrastructure made an energy-saving design a challenge, but BBG-BBGM found useful opportunities from the building’s abundant natural light, window views, and operable windows. All were tapped to reduce electricity for lighting and heating.

The 25th floor gets a green makeover
“On the 25th floor we have abundant light on all sides of a four-sided, unobstructed open space, with nice views,” says Bruno Grinwis, Brennan Beer’s partner-in-charge of commercial interiors. “The natural light and window views have LEED aspects. The natural light gave us the opportunity to create an electrical and lighting system with light and motion sensors to dim or shut off light in the space. The operable windows cool down rooms and bring fresh air into the space, meeting LEED requirements. Everybody in the office has natural light and an unobstructed exterior view, providing a sense of openness and employee comfort, which for us is more important that materials.”

To help capture natural light, the office design incorporates considerable glass and white tones, including walls, exposed ceilings, beams, columns, furniture, and reflective surfaces. Incorporated in the open studio design is a workstation arrangement called benching, which encourages collaboration and uses reflective white surfaces to capture natural light. There are also group areas that maximize glass and white tones. Sensor-based window shades are used to diminish the heat output of the Empire State’s glazing.

Chillers on the 25th floor roof setback contribute to sustainability
BBG-BBGM installed two 9,500-pound chillers with HVAC equipment on the southwest roof setback on the 25th floor. “When we looked at the infrastructure, we had two options,” says Grinwis. “The first option was less expensive: To build chiller rooms in the space itself at the four corners of the building, and those rooms would have taken 200 square feet each. There would be a chiller tower in each room tapping into a window next to it, distributing from there. With the rent you pay in New York City, we thought this wasn’t the best idea.

“We opted to go with a custom chiller unit designed and built for the Empire State Building. It’s a big, flat, wide box that goes within the ceiling structure, and two chiller towers are built onto the roof setback of the 25th floor, far from the edge and tucked into a corner, not seen by the public. This gave us an opportunity not only to bring in fresh air and cooling at the level and capacity we needed for our office due to its population and our big IT room, but also to use an energy management system to control the entire system ourselves. We are basically a little building within the building. We control the chillers and system itself, like a building manager.”

The system also gives the firm the opportunity to sub-meter its office. “We are responsible for our own energy consumption,” Grinwis points out. “Usually you cannot sub-meter a major building with an HVAC system because it is shared by a multitude of people. But in this case we are not tapping into the building system.”

The firms are aiming to keep energy consumption at 15 percent below ASHRAE standards. Additional green features in the suite include low-VOC paints and adhesives; recycled and renewable materials, such as certified wood floors, fiberglass ceiling tiles and wall coverings, and strawboard millwork; and LEED-certified furniture.