While
the Skyscraper Museum in New York City hosts an up-to-the-minute
exhibition on green towers through May of 2006, its focus is entirely
on local projects. The New York Times Headquarters by Renzo Piano
Building Workshop, for example, is a shining example of the future:
Tall buildings that use less energy and promote better health for their
occupants. But most of the New York buildings are yet to top off. And
such projects have been far more common in Europe, of course. Standouts
like Foster & Partners' missile-shaped icon for Swiss Re, opened
early last year.
Yet all these towers owe a debt of
gratitude to an unlikely pioneer in an even less likely place: Piano's
Aurora Place, whose elegant, curving shafts grace Sydney's skyline. Not
only does this commercial mixed-use project break ground in key
sustainable concepts such as natural lighting and ventilation, but it
even anticipates the advances so highly touted for the New York Times
project.
And it opened more than five years ago. More > | 
