The global financial institution JPMorgan just unveiled its plans for a new headquarters building in Manhattan. The 60-story, 2.5 million-square-foot tower is certainly something to be celebrated. It has a beautiful stairstep design and looks as if it is standing on stilts as the bottom of the first floor is raised 60 feet in the air by supportive trusses. It is also a technological marvel. It will be one hundred percent electric powered and will have over 50,000 connected devices giving it the proud, if not verbose, distinction of being “the most connected, data-driven high-rise building in New York City.”
The building will also be a huge investment in sustainability. It will be powered completely on green energy supplied by a local hydroelectric plant. The developers also recycled 97 percent of the material of the building that was demolished to make way for the new construction. The technology used to make this a “net-zero” building will likely be copied by many other forward-thinking developers.
The announcement comes on the heels of a NASA scientist’s publicity stunt where he chained himself to a JPMorgan building to protest the company being the largest financier of the oil and gas industry. Of course, from JPMorgan’s perspective, they are investing wisely. “Until scalable, reliable, clean and affordable technologies are available, the world will need to work with all of the current sources of energy – fossil and non-fossil – and their respective drawbacks,” it said in its first annual energy outlook released today.