It's a common saying that size doesn't matter, but nobody told the people who built the Taipei 101 tower that. The 1,666 foot tall building, located in Taiwan, has just become the world's tallest green building by achieving LEED Platinum certification in the Existing Building Operation and Maintenance category from the U.S. Green Building Council.
Not only is this now the tallest building to receive LEED certification, it is also the largest scale building with a total area of 1.6 million square feet and the green building with the most tenants at 90.
The owner of Taipei 101 began their quest to achieve LEED status in November of 2009, and went through a rigorous process of updating the building to meet all of the standards that LEED requires. One of the big differences between Taipei 101 and other, non-green buildings is the air quality. There are 11 floors in the building that house air handling units that provide air conditioning to the rest of the building.
These units monitor the level of CO2 in the air, and when it gets to high in a certain area, the units will draw in air from outside of the building to lower the CO2 levels. The amount of CO2 in the air which they will tolerate is also different from most building, at 600 parts-per-million rather than the national standard of 1000 ppm. |
