When design of the VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre was awarded to Perkins+Will Canada in late 2007, architects were challenged to create a building that not only would increase visibility for and attract more visitors to the approximately 54-acre internationally recognized garden in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, but also meet the highest goals in sustainable building design.

The practical goal of the new $61-million 21-story Student Residence Hall at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) in Boston may have been to provide 145,600 square feet of on-campus accommodations for 493 students when it opens in the fall of 2012.  But the unique design of the new Residence Hall – which is clad in 5,500 Alucobond® Plus aluminum composite panels in seven custom colors that are dimensionally positioned with glass to invoke Gustav Klimt’s 1909 “Tree of Life” painting – has met an aesthetic goal to set the building apart on the Boston skyline and, thereby, create an idiosyncratic image for MassArt.

As part of The State University of New York (SUNY), Stony Brook University on Long Island’s north shore, is part of the nation’s largest and most comprehensive state university system, which web site states “ is committed to providing quality education at an affordable price.”  So, when new residence halls recently were required to meet the needs of Stony Brook’s fast-growing student population, both budget and time constraints played important roles in the buildings’ architectural design.

The New England Council of Carpenters (NERCC) has represented the interests of its members for more than 130 years.  While a long-standing regional presence, this traditional organization based in Boston also embraces modern goals for its membership of 22,000 carpenters in six New England states.  So, when the new home of NERCC and the Boston Carpenters Training Center was designed, it was important to organization leaders that it be comprised of both traditional and modern architectural influences.

Three architectural firms were challenged by the Vancouver Organizing Committee to design Millennium Water:  The Southeast False Creek Olympic Village in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, for its first use as a temporary home for many of the 2,600 athletes from 82 nations competing in the 2010 Winter Olympics. (The Olympic Games were held Feb. 12-28, 2010, in venues located throughout Greater Vancouver, as well as in the resort town of Whistler, British Columbia, where additional athletes were hosted.)  More permanently, Millennium Water was designed as a sustainable mixed-use residential and commercial community, incorporating not only environmental sustainability but social and economic sustainability goals as well.