20 Fenchurch Street
Photo © Brad Temkin
The angled zinc-clad walls of Carnegie Mellon University’s Gates Center for Computer Science and Hillman Center for Future-Generation Technologies were completed in 2009 and rise from a ravine on the western side of the urban campus. The LEED Gold–certified complex, designed by Mack Scogin Merrill Elam Architects, is made up of a six-story structure and a smaller, trapezoidal, four-story one, connected by a glass-enclosed lobby with pedestrian bridges. Michael Van Valkenburgh designed a naturalistic landscape for the buildings that features five green roofs and a winter garden. CMU’s School of Architecture has been an influential advocate for sustainable design in the city and worldwide through its Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics, Computational Design Laboratory, Intelligent Workplace Laboratory, and Remaking Cities Institute.