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Architecture Travel

Architecture Travel: In NYC, Glass Towers Grow Like Weeds

September 10, 2008 at 10:30 AM | 0 Comments

Even though new buildings can be LEED certified and as green as a field of clover, many times it would've been better to work with what we already had. One of the core tenets of green design is to rehabilitate existing structures, rather than build whole new ones: Knocking down a building wastes all the energy that went into building it.

But New York has gone knock-down, build-up crazy in the past 15 years says New York magazine. In that time, 76,000 new buildings were constructed and 44,000 were destroyed. If you want to see what things were like before the current Dubai-esque transformation, check out Justin Davidson's great article about "The Glass Stampede." It shows side by side, before and after photos of the charming structures of old NYC versus the glass monoliths of today.

For residents or tourists alike, Davidson's comparisons are a map to the city that was--and the one that New York's becoming.

Related Stories:
· The Glass Stampede [NYM]
· New York Travel coverage [Jaunted]
· Architecture Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: NYM]