Hasta La Ideas

Beautiful as our architecture is here in Chicago, a lot of it wasn’t built with the green, LEED-happy practices we use today. Fortunately, there’s been movement toward revising some of those negatives, as Julie Wernau reports in her piece about architect Sara Beardsley‘s efforts to turn the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) totally green. The project, which would make the US’s tallest building energy efficient, is through local super firm Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture and is expected to run somewhere between $200 to $300 million, doing things like replacing all of its windows and adding all sorts of green rooftop additions some hundred stories above the ground. It’s an ambitious project, to be sure, and hasn’t picked up full steam yet, with plans for funding this massive endeavor still in the works, but here’s to hoping it all works out and inspires other older buildings to do the same. Here are some of the details on the changes:

In design plans, the “green roof” project would be expanded to the building’s multiple roofs, along with wind turbines and solar panels. But those rooftops would be more symbolic than anything else. The real energy savings will be culled from the 16,000 windows that will be replaced and from lighting automation and reduction.

The window project is estimated to be enough to cut heating needs by 50 percent and allow for new, smaller mechanical systems with a significantly lower environmental impact. A plumbing upgrade is expected to reduce water usage by 24 million gallons a year.

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