Guangzhou City in southern China is no stranger to development. Over the past decade, the region has seen explosive development with buildings going up so fast that many returning to the region after a long absence say that they don’t even recognize their own city. As one would expect with such rampant development, pollution and energy consumption have exploded along with the building boom. But as China begins to take an abrupt about-face regarding its environmental policy, more and more environmental initiatives are being passed along with more energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly buildings being designed and constructed in the country. The Pearl River Tower is one of these structures and, so far, is on track to becoming one of the world’s most energy-efficient skyscrapers.
Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the 71-story Pearl River Tower is a great example of a building design where the main objective is energy-efficiency. So often these days many architects, and their so-called ‘green buildings’, merely ‘bolt on’ green features after a design is either already fully formed or constructed. While more effective than a conventional building on its own, ‘bolt on’ green features like solar panels, wind turbines, etc. on their own can only do so much. It’s the equivalent of modifying a low-end car to go faster. Yes; it can be done, but in the end it’s never going to perform as well as a car designed to be fast.
Beyond Energy-Efficiency
The Pearl River Tower is designed to be more than just energy-efficient; it’s designed to provide itself all of its needed operational power. That’s right, a net-zero skyscraper. While claims such as this one have been made in the past, it appears the Pearl River Tower has the design and equipment to achieve this lofty goal.
The building’s unique curved design is intended to focus the strong prevailing southern winds that blow through the region. Orientated to face these winds head-on, the Pearl River Tower’s sculpted facade will increase the speed of these winds (by two-and-a-half times) and channel them through two main slots in the building where wind turbines will be located. Because of this focusing of wind and higher speeds, it is estimated the vertical turbines will produce up to 15 times more energy than they would if they were standalone units.
The Bells And Whistles
In addition to its super-velocity wind focusing design, the building incorporates a number of other design features and systems that fulfill energy-saving and energy-production roles. Many of these features also serve multiple purposes which saves both space and money. Some of the more unique and notable elements of the structure are:
- Slab integrated cooling system that circulates cool water through the floors of the building acting as a cooling radiator. This method is much more energy-efficient than forced air cooling and saves space as well. So much so that the building owners were able to add an additional 5-stories to the building without increasing its originally designed and approved height.
- Reclaimed energy through routing each floor’s exhaust air into the south side’s double-layer curtain-wall cavity. This thermal barrier of hot dry air can then be reused on the mechanical floor for passive dehumidification.
- High temperature fuel cells for excess energy storage.
- Outer skin of the facade has incorporated glare control as well as integrated solar PV for energy production.
- In-floor air displacement HVAC
- Double-decker elevator
SOM has publicly stated that there were plans to make Pearl River Tower a positive energy structure (produce an excess of electricity), but because there’s no facility in Guangzhou to feed self-generated power back into the grid, the plan was abandoned. Situations like these highlight the speed at which China continues to develop and the inability of the infrastructure to keep up with the rate of development. The Tower is slated to be finished later this year, but it’s progress is running a little behind and will most likely be completed by the end of 2010.
The Good: A 71-story skyscraper capable of providing for all of its electrical needs. Beautiful design.
The Bad: Structures like the Pearl River Tower are unfortunately the exception in China and certainly the rest of the world. It remains to be seen if the energy commissioning on this structure will match its lofty stated claims of energy self-sufficiency. Supposedly it’s the HQ for a Chinese tobacco company!
The Bottom-Line: An amazing feat of design, engineering and construction that shows just because something is big doesn’t mean it can’t be efficient.
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