Liam M – Stephen Del Percio – 2/28/09

Adam, Harry, and I visited a man named Stephen T. Del Percio, who is a construction and real-estate attorney.  He is also the publisher of the blog “Green Buildings NYC,” which is a major reference for anyone looking for information about happenings in the world of green architecture.  While at his office, we had a little over an hour-long discussion over a few topics related to green architecture and the work Stephen does.  One of the main topics we covered was the fact that many buildings had been given the LEED label, but they were not completely energy-efficient.  Two examples are the Hearst Tower and Time Warner Center.  We were told that while both of these buildings have a LEED label, they may be less efficient than a simple brick building.  This is because of the fact that both buildings have an all-glass exterior.  We learned that buildings with a lot of glass windows surrounded its exterior can lose large amounts of money from having to pay larger heating bills from the heat that seeps through the glass.  Stephen gave us a demonstration by telling us to place our hands on the window of the conference room we were in.  We all noticed that the window was freezing.  This is because heat can easily travel through glass, causing that heat to be wasted, and more cold to come in.  Having said that not all ‘green’ buildings, are efficient, I’ll move on to another one of the topics we discussed.  Harry lives in a building called the Riverhouse, which is a LEED building.  Two people that you may or may not know that also live in that building are Tyra Banks and Leonardo Dicaprio.  We discussed whether or not these two peoples’ choice of housing could be used as a marketing device to provoke people to purchase green homes.  While this would be good for the green companies, it might take away from the purpose of having a green building, and that people would just be moving in to catch a glimpse of a celebrity’s lifestyle.One final thing is that when we mentioned the school we attend (LREI) and how it is becoming green, he somewhat recalled an article that he wrote about our school.  While I am not sure the whereabouts of this article or if it in fact, was written, I will post the link if I find it.-Liam M. The link to Mr. Percio’s blog is: www.greenbuildingsNYC.com