With Earth Hour, now being held for the sixth time worldwide, the WWF is calling upon as many buildings and landmarks as possible to switch off their lights for one hour at 8:30 p.m. on 31 March 2012. The WWF aims to use the campaign to “celebrate our unique planet and its nature (…) and to demonstrate how we can preserve it”. Towns and cities worldwide are taking part in Earth Hour, as are building owners and users. Last year alone around 1.8 billion people heeded the WWF’s call.

“We are very pleased to be taking part in the WWF’s Earth Hour initiative with our buildings, particularly since project developers and operators of office buildings bear considerable responsibility where the environment is concerned. This is why our buildings are developed and realised in accordance with strict and verifiable sustainability criteria. These not only include an efficient and resource-conserving energy concept, but also preferential use of regional building materials in order to keep transport routes short and thus minimise related energy consumption and CO2 emissions. In Tower 185, for example, using rainwater to flush toilets means we save around 2.3 million litres of drinking water,” explains Bernhard H. Hansen, Chief Development Officer at CA Immo.

Both Frankfurt’s Tower 185, designed by Prof. Mäckler Architects, and the SKYGARDEN, located in Munich’s Arnulfpark and designed by Hamburg architects Bothe Richter Teherani, were both consistently developed and realised as green buildings by CA Immo. During the process, the internationally recognised LEED sustainability criteria of the U.S. Green Building Council were adhered to. The SKYGARDEN, for example, boasts special energy-efficient workplace lighting technology, which operates according to daylight and human presence, meaning that it uses just 10 watts per square metre. Currently both buildings are being certified at the “Gold” level. Tower 185 will thus become one of the first high-rise buildings in Germany to be awarded this certificate.