When Colby Barr and Ryan O'Donovan opened Verve four and a half years ago on a shoestring budget, they did all the interior work themselves, from pouring the concrete counters to driving to Sausalito, California, to buying stoneware tile. Slinging espressos for the surfers and other locals in the Pleasure Point area of Santa Cruz, California, proved successful, and soon they took over the space next door and began roasting their own coffee. By 2010 they had outgrown both spaces and, to keep up with growing demand, Barr and O'Donovan decided to expand their roasting capacity. Working with Daniel Gomez

In January, Facebook users spent more than 10.5 billion minutes a day accessing the site just by computer, according to the company's IPO. That takes a lot of energy. Most data centers'large hubs of servers that handle bank transactions, cloud-based email services, and friend requests'devote around one-third of their energy consumption to building operations. Having leased space in such facilities, Facebook wanted its first data center to maximize energy efficiency. Working with Sheehan Partners and AlfaTech Consulting, the company rethought every piece of equipment, from circuit boards to air handling. Thanks to an evaporative cooling system, a custom power-distribution system,

When the Los Angeles developer Bryn Stroyke of Stroyke Properties acquired a prime corner location in downtown Manhattan Beach, he planned to replace the site's existing restaurant with a mixed-use office building'but not a standard box with street-level retail. Instead, he and his investors wanted to build a boutique office complex to attract individual proprietors whose small size excluded them from the community's competitive market. The opportunity for an interior designer or a solo real estate broker, for instance, to acquire centrally located office space was unprecedented, says Grant Kirkpatrick of KAA Design, 'especially in Manhattan Beach, where downtown development