This is cool timing. I go to NCSU, and just last night we had a paneled discussion with Charlie Rose about sustainability in the future; one of the men on the

This is cool timing. I go to NCSU, and just last night we had a paneled discussion with Charlie Rose about sustainability in the future; one of the men on the board was Thom Mayne, a noted architect who's doing work on sustainable buildings (though mostly office buildings). One of his key themes from the talk was about how it used to be that design (making buildings artsy) and efficiency (in an energy sense) used to be kind of divided in the architecture world, particularly when he was a student. He said that there has been a major paradigm shift and a merge in the two philosophies. For examples, check out the Phare Tower that he's working on. The entire tower is optimized for using natural light and airflow, rather than artificial light and air conditioning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phare_Tower http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phare_Tower He had some other awesome examples, but I don't know where to find them.