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Scheduled to begin construction in Winter 2005 on 11 acres in Rockville, MD, the Tower II Office Building is the world’s largest commercial application of the most progressive green environmental technologies - along with the ancient Vedic design principles of orientation, placement, and proportion. The facility will be the centerpiece of the proposed “Phase 2 of Tower Oaks” (a $225-million, 600,000-square-foot certified green mixed-use development).
The $72-million, 200,000-square-foot, world-class office building will meet the Gold level of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Green Building Rating System®.
Jeffrey Abramson, partner, The Tower Cos., Washington, D.C., says he was compelled to go beyond green to fulfill his mission to provide clients with the healthiest possible work environments conducive to success. “We realized there is more to a healthy workspace than green building materials. We realized that the architecture of the workspace drives function, performance, and success.”
The Vedic design theories involved in the Tower II project include:
- Right Direction. Orientation of a building has a dramatic and easily measured impact upon the quality of life of its occupants. The sun’s energy is most nourishing when it’s rising; buildings that face east bring the greatest benefits to the health and vitality of their occupants.
- Right Placement of Rooms. Because the sun has different qualities of energy as it moves across the sky, Vedic buildings are designed so that these energies correspond to specific activities performed within the rooms in the building.
- Right Proportion. Key to successful design in nature, right proportion in buildings can connect individual intelligence to cosmic intelligence.
- Natural, Non-Toxic Materials and Solar Energy. Vedic architecture promotes natural and non-toxic construction materials. It also emphasizes filling rooms with sunlight and fresh air, as well as the use of photovoltaics for on-site energy generation.
