Buildings magazine featured the NASA Sustainability Base, for which William McDonough + Partners is the Design Architect, in its April issue (and on its cover). Here’s an excerpt:
According to Kevin Burke, partner and director of practice for WM+P, McDonough wondered what would happen if they focused NASA’s intelligence on developing a project on earth (and joked that the project’s tagline would be “We Come in Peace”). But joke became reality as WM+P, collaborating with AECOM, worked with the NASA Ames Research Center to design Sustainability Base, which has high-tech, high-performance features to make it friendly to the environment and its occupants–all while reducing operating and maintenance costs.
“We’re metaphorically thinking of it as the first lunar outpost on earth,” says Zornetzer of the 50,000-square-foot, $23 million project, which should be completed by November or December (with full occupancy by March 2011).