THE HEADQUARTERS TOWER for JPMorgan Chase at 270 Park Avenue by Foster + Partners is, if nothing else, a building for this moment. It is big, very big. It is expensive, very expensive, at a cost reported to be north of $3 billion. It is immodest in the extreme. It makes great claims to sustainability, which are true if you think only in terms of what it will cost to operate per square foot but not at all if you factor in the energy embedded in the distinguished tower by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill that was demolished to make way for it and the energy required to build a huge skyscraper in its place. The JPMorgan building strikes many people as ominous. The architecture critic for The Guardian, Oliver Wainwright, called it “a dark, looming mass” and said it seems “ready to swallow the dainty Chrysler Building that trembles in its shadow.”
Whatever. So far as the glorious Chrysler i…
