The World Headquarters for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is located on Cape Cod in Yarmouthport, Massachusetts, where IFAW has pursued its work for thirty years. This project by DesignLab Architects, created a new base of operations for the nearly 200 people IFAW employs on the Cape. The new IFAW headquarters encompasses 54,000 square feet of space in three connected buildings. The space is used for research, public relations, meetings, conferences, a worldwide data center, and serves as the hub for IFAW's 16 country offices. The project accomplishes its goals through a pragmatic low-cost, low-tech approach to sustainability based on fundamentals and common sense. The new IFAW headquarters is LEED Gold certified and cost just $220/ft2 to build. The new building is inspired by a Herreshoff "12 1/2" sailboat that you might see in the waters off Cape Cod. Tight white boards cover the outside, while the inside exposes an elegant open structure and natural wood. The site landscape draws from the 18th-century Bartlett farm in nearby Barnstable as a model of landscape preservation. The resulting layout is in the tradition of rural Cape Cod development; a half-acre courtyard of native grasses, open to the south, centers the building complex, whose flexible architecture is located at the north, east and west edges of the site. READ MORE