SOM proposes a net-zero campus for The New York Climate Exchange

Recently, New York City unveiled a new logo and brand identity for New York City Tourism + Conventions, with the city welcoming a reimagined 'We love NYC’ logo. In that same breath, New York City Mayor Eric Adams also announced an ambitious plan to convert the city’s unused office spaces into apartment dwellings, bringing 40,000 new units by the next decade. It almost feels as if the Big Apple is going through a whole era of reinventing itself, reminding us of American Writer O Henry’s words, “It'll be a great place if they ever finish it.” Simultaneously, scientists have been warning about New York City sinking due to the weight of its buildings. While a part of the world is alarmingly dreading the results of climate change, climate crisis and global warming, the other half is still sceptical about the crisis' very existence. However, while the catastrophe remains inevitable, the architecture community’s response is creating sustainable buildings, a modern-day version of an old approach of ‘building more,’ but this time around, perhaps ‘responsibly.’

The latest addition to this sustainable architecture initiative is The New York Climate Exchange (The Exchange) in the United States. In partnership with Stony Brook University, a public research institute in New York, SOM's design for The Exchange aims to create a new net-zero campus, addressing the climate crisis. At the announcement of the project New York City Mayor Eric Adams defined the project as “(...) a place for every New Yorker to learn and engage with the environment because all of us are in this together.” The Exchange is said to be a first-of-its-kind international centre for developing and deploying dynamic solutions to our global climate crisis, while also acting as a regional hub for the rapidly evolving green economy.

The Exchange–conceived by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), in collaboration with Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects, Buro Happold, and Langan Engineering– hopes to be a model for sustainability, deploying energy-positive design strategies including mass timber construction, on-site solar power generation, and integration of existing buildings to achieve a net zero energy campus. With a sinuous form and ascending curved facade design, the new building proposed in Governors Island appears to weave a new architectural language into the city’s second beloved park. It also aims to become one of the first buildings in New York City to meet Living Building Challenge standards and one of the first sites in the country to achieve True Zero Waste certification, meeting 100 per cent of its non-potable water demands with rainwater and treated wastewater, and runs entirely on electricity generated on-site—even creating enough energy to serve the city’s power grid.

“Our design for this new campus embodies the stewardship necessary to solve the climate crisis by weaving sinuous mass timber pavilions through the rolling landscape of the park and reusing the historic building fabric of Governors Island. Together, these spaces will cultivate advances in climate research and pilot new technologies that can be depleted across the city and eventually the world,” said SOM Design Partner Colin Koop.

In addition to convening the world’s leaders and climate experts, The Exchange aims to host green job training and skills-building programs for local residents as well as partner with local institutions like the Pratt Institute, Pace University, New York University, the City University of New York, SUNY Maritime College, Brookhaven National Labs, and IBM on addressing the social and practical challenges created by climate change—including research that becomes commercially viable and ideas that lead to immediate action on local and global levels.

"We are honoured, excited, and proud to partner with the City of New York to build this historic centre that will cement New York City as the world leader on climate change, the most pressing issue of our time. Up until now, the development of climate solutions has been siloed, with world leaders separate from expert scientists separate from the on-the-ground green workforce. As an international leader on climate and as the leading public research institution in NewYork, Stony Brook University will bring stakeholders together from the academic, government and business communities to make the Climate Exchange the centre of research, innovation, education, and collaboration to address this global crisis,” shared Stony Brook University President Maurie McInnis.