Casa Onda: A House in Three Parts—and Two Continents

Sustainable NYPD Auto Impoundment Facility Wins Design Award
New York City-based Spacesmith LLP garnered a design award in the office building category from the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce for the design of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) Tow Pound Operations Building located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The project will earn LEED Gold. The Design Award is part of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce’s 2009 Building Brooklyn Awards Program. The Brooklyn Navy Yard is 300 acres of buildings, dry docks, and piers on a historic industrial waterfront. The new Tow Pound Operations Building opened this spring.

Biophilic Oregon Sustainability Center Will Be a Locally Grown Original
It’s hard to find a more emblematic project for the contemporary sustainability movement than the Oregon Sustainability Center. Now in the final stages of a feasibility study, this highly sustainable high rise in Portland, Ore., combines the efforts of the nonprofit, education, business, and public sectors to create a building that adheres to the most stringent sustainability certification standard that exists, and uses several distinct design languages and systems to get there. It takes the sustainability conversation out of the design lab and into classrooms, civil servant offices, business board rooms, and nonprofit outreach centers.