One Bryant Park

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Set to rise 54 stories above Manhattan, the crystalline Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park will incorporate an unrivaled number of environmentally friendly technologies, from its windows to its toilets. The building will supply 70 percent of its own energy with an on-site natural-gas-burning power plant. For climate control, One Bryant Park will rely on excess thermal energy from the power plant, a groundwater heat exchanger that is the first of its type, and an air-conditioning system cooled by ice made with excess power during off-peak hours. The building will even have waterless urinals and use water collected from the roof to flush toilets. Together, these systems are designed to earn the building a Platinum rating-the highest possible-from the U.S. Green Building Council when construction is completed in 2008 and, the builders hope, will also save the kind of green that matters to shareholders.