In keeping with President Obama’s “Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance” executive order, we’ve seen a decisive push for greener federal buildings over the past year. It even appears that different agencies are actually vying with each other for the most sustainable buildings—NASA seems absolutely thrilled that the new Propellants North Administrative and Maintenance Facility, at the Kennedy Space Center, will be its greenest facility ever.

The building will be “a future hub for spacecraft fueling support and a storage facility for cryogenic fuel transfer equipment,” so I was expecting suitably fancy, futuristic technology. Instead, the design and construction team is gunning for a LEED Platinum rating with some good old-fashioned methods—recycling and Dumpster diving. Read more…

Yesterday was the ground-breaking ceremony for William McDonough + Partners’ new Collaborative Support Facility at NASA’s Ames Research Center, in Silicon Valley. The 50,000-square-foot facility is expected to be the highest-performing building in the federal government, and thus will incorporate a dizzying array of green-building strategies (natural ventilation, a geothermal system, radiant cooling, on-site photovoltaic energy generation, and on and on) as well as some of the latest NASA technologies. “I like to think of it as the first lunar outpost on Earth,” the center’s director said. Learn more about the mission and features of the “Sustainability Base” with this five-minute video.