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Photo © Joseph Hoffheimer In 2007, a Pittsburgh-based real-estate developer purchased a vacant Nabisco factory in the city's predominantly residential East End. The repurposed 495,000-square-foot building, dating to 1918, reopened in 2010 following a $110 million renovation by Pittsburgh-based Astorino. The complex now includes a hotel, retail space, and offices and serves as Google's new Pittsburgh headquarters. The tech giant occupies a two-story penthouse designed by another local firm, Strada. The office features an open floor plan and whimsical elements, including a giant suspended hammock. Plans are in the works for Bakery Square 2.0, a $120 million office, retail, and

Photo © Eric Staudenmaier In 2009, Koning Eizenberg Architecture completed the transformation of the 104-year-old Century Building in Pittsburgh’s downtown cultural district, converting the 12-story commercial office building into 60 residential units with retail and office space on the lower floors. The LEED Gold–certified building offers some of the first mixed-income housing in the city’s downtown; the affordable and market-rate units are indistinguishable, and residents have access to a fitness room, lounge areas, and a roof deck with views of the Allegheny River. The exterior of the building is embellished with a loud, lime-green billboard stamped with a bike icon

Photo © Brad Feinknopf The sweeping roof of Rafael Vi'oly's David L. Lawrence Convention Center (below) echoes Pittsburgh's 'Three Sisters' bridges. When it opened in 2003, the LEED Gold, 1.5 million-square-foot facility was the world's largest green building. Earlier this year, the convention center earned a Platinum rating for its operations and maintenance practices as part of the LEED-EBOM program, making it the first convention center with certification for both new construction and existing buildings. In 2011, a waterfront plaza in front of the building (bottom) was completed, extending an existing shoreline trail for pedestrians and cyclists. The park, designed

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

Photo © Bruce Damonte Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group claims more green buildings than any other company in the world. Nationwide it has about 160 LEED projects, with several major ones on its home turf, including Three PNC Plaza (background), a glass-clad, 23-story mixed-use building by Gensler. When it opened in 2009, it was the first tower completed in the downtown core in more than two decades. The building has three programmatic elements'a hotel, condominiums, and office space'with separate but interconnected lobbies. It overlooks Market Square (foreground), a recently renovated public space surrounded by restaurants and retail that was the

The former Steel Town embraces its rivers and green design Image © Jason Varney Pittsburgh's identity has always been its work. Thirty years ago, when it lost the steel mills that had forged its 20th-century reputation, it became part of the Rust Belt, with a fractured economy and three polluted rivers: the Ohio, Monongahela, and Allegheny. View Larger image Map by Norman Hathaway RELATED LINKS: Tower at PNC Plaza Center for Sustainable Landscapes Today, locals use the rivers for play as well as work. On sunny summer weekends, the water buzzes with kayaks and pleasure boats, thousands flock to outdoor

Photo courtesy LMN Architects Slated for completion in July 2013, LMN Architects' Medical Mart and the Cleveland Convention Center underground are rising in tandem with the revival by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol (GGN) of Daniel Burnham's 1903 downtown Mall (above). Together, the projects aim to bring the public back to the city center and reconnect a greener, unified Mall with the lakefront. The five-level Medical Mart (below), with a pixelated window pattern, is a permanent showroom for medical manufacturers. GGN's long-term plan for the Mall includes 'outdoor rooms' to accommodate flexible programming and lighting to showcase beautiful historic buildings. Photo courtesy

Photo © Jason Meyer/Feinknopf The nine-mile, $200 million bus rapid-transit line launched in October 2008, transporting passengers adjacent to and along Euclid Avenue, a grand corridor once known as Millionaires’ Row, which went into a spiral of deterioration and neglect after the Great Depression. Decades in the imagining, the transit line is now credited with helping to attract $5.8 billion in investments for new construction and rehabilitation on Euclid. Hybrid rapid-transit vehicles stop at 40 stations and connect two growing areas, University Circle and downtown Cleveland.

Photo © Russell Chronister Three pavilions for rowing (two of which are visible above), designed by OKC-based Elliott + Associates Architects, breathe new life into once-disused land along the Oklahoma River's northern bank. The newest and tallest, the five-story, steel-frame Chesapeake Finish Line Tower (above center), cantilevers over its concrete base, marking the official end point for races, while the Devon Boathouse (above right) is home to the Oklahoma City University rowing and kayaking teams. The boathouses have garnered national attention and elevated Oklahoma City's status as a world-class city for training and competition, says principal Rand Elliott.

Photo © Steven Wilson Urban revitalization isn't just about OKC's downtown core. A stone's throw from the burgeoning city center are two Oklahoma City neighborhoods with histories that stretch back to the early 1920s: Bricktown (above) and Automobile Alley (right). Both are getting new leases on their previous lives (as centers for freight operations and the auto industry, respectively). Today Bricktown'and its water-taxi-navigable canals'is home to restaurants, nightclubs, and the corporate headquarters of fast-food giant Sonic. Automobile Alley is similarly dotted with shops and restaurants, and, like Bricktown, has seen many of its concrete-and-brick buildings become rental apartments and condominiums.