Pearl River Tower

If this tower delivers what it promises, many more will build similar ones.
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SOM's Pearl River Tower.
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The storied design firm has set its sights on redefining one of its bread-and-butter project types, the corporate headquarters, into a model of high-tech sustainability
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Designing towers for corporate headquarters is something Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) can do in its sleep. When the firm won a competition for a tobacco company tower in the new city of Guangzhou, China, SOM's Chicago partners decided to approach the commission as a net-zero-energy-skyscraper experiment. "We knew the tower was going to get built with or without us, so we felt we might as well design it and make it as sustainable as possible," says Roger Frechette, director of m/e/p sustainable engineering at SOM.
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Frechette distinguishes a "net"-zero-energy building as one that negligibly affects its local environment. In the case of the 71-story, 2.2-million-square-foot Pearl River Tower, this meant it had to conserve and generate enough power to meet its energy demands. "There is no silver bullet," Frechette says. "What we have is a series of small steps that get you to something that makes a difference." These divide into four categories: reduction, reclamation, absorption, and generation.
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http://archrecord.construction.com/features/digital/archives/0612casestudy-1.asp