When Target purchased two neglected commercial buildings on a prime site as a long-term real-estate investment, the company decided to adapt them during the interim. Across the street from its headquarters in downtown Minneapolis, Target Plaza Commons is a new space for employees to store their bikes, take yoga classes, play basketball—and perhaps do some work. “It’s different from anything they have at Target corporate. It’s more raw,” says Matthew Kreilich, principal at Minneapolis-based Julie Snow Architects, which oversaw the renovation of the 57,000-square-foot complex. Target hopes the rugged look—and the unsubtle references to California’s start-up-friendly, no-frills offices in old

Since the curtain rose on the art form in the 17th century, classical ballet has required its practitioners to leap, lift, and chass' onstage while making it all appear as effortless as a two-step. A 1914-era former coal power plant for the nearby Union Station train depot, then, isn't as unlikely a home for Missouri's Kansas City Ballet (KCB) as it may seem at first. It embodies the kind of industriousness and strength required to be a dancer. 'There is something counterintuitive about putting a ballet school beside a rail yard,' admits Steve McDowell, principal and design director at the

Though Vancouver Convention Centre West spans 22 acres on the downtown waterfront and includes infrastructure for such future amenities as a seaplane terminal, the center is one of the city’s more humble buildings. LMN Architects, with DA Architects + Planners and Musson Cattell Mackey Partnership, shaped 1 million square feet of exhibit halls, conference rooms, and event spaces into a sloping, grass-covered building that looks more like a stepped hillock wrapped in glass than a business complex. Before the center’s completion, in 2009, this swath of downtown Vancouver abruptly ended at a brownfield site on Coal Harbor. To connect the

When the Baton Rouge, Louisiana'based billboard company Lamar Advertising outgrew its headquarters, finding another traditional office building would have been the natural next step. But a 1970s data center across the street hit the market, and management decided to make the leap—despite the building's closed-off precast-concrete facade and stingy allotment of windows. “You can imagine staff saying, 'What, we're going to move into that?' ” recalls architect Steve Dumez of the New Orleans'based firm Eskew+Dumez+Ripple (EDR). “It took a tremendous amount of vision to look at that building and say, 'This is going to be our new headquarters.'” Choosing a

Completed in 2010 in Irapuato, a city in the south-central region of Mexico's Guanajuato state, Procter & Gamble's (P&G) Planta Milenio illustrates the potential gains of rethinking the architecture of today's factories. While the design, by architects Davis Brody Bond with engineering designer and project manager Arup, is rooted in the company's industrial process, it balances utilitarian goals with those that have emerged in the global economy—environmental sustainability, worker retention, and productivity. “They wanted as much flexibility as possible,” says Davis Brody Bond partner Christopher K. Grabé. The design team held workshops with P&G employees to understand the manufacturing process.

When the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies decided to move their spring-training operations from Tucson and share a new facility in the Phoenix metropolitan area, the teams wanted more than a state-of-the-art ballpark. For the hundreds of thousands of supporters who come out each spring to watch practice games, picnic on the stadium lawn, and cut loose before the baseball season begins, the Diamondbacks and Rockies (who are otherwise unaffiliated) set out to create the best fan experience in the major leagues. The teams found a home in the Salt River Pima-Maricopa County Indian Community, which invested in creating

Devon Energy Center in Oklahoma City sets a shining example for investing locally. Founded in 1971, Devon Energy, an independent oil and natural-gas exploration and production company, quickly grew to over 2,000 employees who were spread out across five different aging buildings downtown. The company needed to consolidate. But rather than relocating, management insisted on staying in Oklahoma and building from the ground up. “We could see in future years the city was going to be great,” says Klaholt Kimker, the company’s vice president of administration. The company’s new headquarters, by New Haven'based architects Pickard Chilton, is defined by a

Located on a six-acre site that was once moldering landfill in Des Moines, a new complex for the Iowa Utilities Board and Office of Consumer Advocate is defying notions about what civic buildings look like, one sunlit, sustainably designed office at a time. This was all part of the two state agencies' plan to become models of energy efficiency and educate the community at large. The Des Moines office of Kansas City, Missouri'based BNIM was hired to accomplish these goals. 'Our general design philosophy is 'resolve, rigor, and restraint,' ' explains project architect Carey Nagle, describing the approach the firm

Encompassing a mere square mile of area, the City of London exemplifies a dense urban fabric. Commercial real-estate developers have typically responded to crowded conditions by reaching skyward: two of London's three tallest buildings'the KPF-designed Heron Tower and Renzo Piano's Shard, both completed in 2010'are within this downtown core. The opening of One New Change that same year demonstrates that not every contemporary icon requires a place in the skyline. Located directly across from St. Paul's Cathedral (itself a onetime record holder in building height), Jean Nouvel's mixed-use complex comprises 560,000 square feet on only six floors. The low-slung arrangement

By 2009, the independent, nonpartisan Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) was well on its way to fulfilling its vision to be the world's leading think tank on the global economy, global security, the environment and energy, and global development. Founded in 2001 by Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, cofounders of the Waterloo, Ontario'based wireless-technology firm Research in Motion (now BlackBerry), and strategically located in the province's Technology Triangle, CIGI had experienced rapid growth in its research programs, and had recently partnered with the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University to launch the Balsillie School of International Affairs. In