This NYC high-rise building cleans the air like trees do

SoHo remains a super-trendy neighborhood in New York City, but a new high-rise in the neighborhood just might make the area smell a little sweeter. 570 Broome, designed by Turkish architect Tahir Demircioglu’s hot boutique architecture firm Builtd, is using a unique combination of two emerging technologies to constantly clean the air around the building — an attractive and welcome feature for a building that is located adjacent to the Holland Tunnel.

First, the façade of 570 Broome is clad in 2,000 square meters of Neolith paneling. This popular building material is composed of three elements: Minerals from granite, quartz, and feldspar that lend the product a powerful rigidity; minerals from glass and silica that lend the paneling chemical stability; and natural oxides that provide chromatic properties. The panels are produced in a press with force and pressure up to 400 bars before being cured in an oven at temperatures exceeding 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The panels are very hard and clean in the first place but they have also gone through a second process to give them their unique air-cleaning properties. The panels have been treated with a titanium dioxide nanoparticle-based treatment called Pureti, which actively alters the chemical makeup of the surrounding air.

“Pureti’s technology reverses pollution, helps improve air quality, and as an added perk keeps the facade cleaner for longer … It’s a no-brainer for developers in urban places — and for eco-conscious buyers, it’s a wonderful sustainability and wellness feature,” a representative for Pureti told Culture Trip.

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The chemical compound is hygroscopic, meaning simply that it directs dirt and water away from the building. However, the Pureti compound is also photo-catalytic, meaning it transforms harmful polluting particles, such as greenhouse gases that contribute to the city’s growing smog problem, into benign nitrates that ultimately end up as minerals, gas, and water. In short, the nasty pollution that bounces off of 570 Broome ends up as nothing more harmful than H2O.

The technique is so effective in fact that one lane mile (or 6,000 square meters) will remove one ton of nitrogen oxide from the air per year, into perpetuity. It’s an effect equivalent to reserving the polluting effect of cars driving 650,000 miles. In terms of the specific number of Pureti-treated surfaces at 570 Broome, it’s equivalent to taking 2,000 cars off of the island of Manhattan for a year.

Demircioglu, who is also actively working on an immersive play experience for children among his other commercial projects, plans to use the new technology on a multi-family development on Long Island. The Luxury apartments at 570 Broome are already on sale, with prices ranging from a cool $1.275 million for a 677-square-foot studio to more than $3.4 million for a 1,200-square-foot, two-bedroom unit.