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This summer, the David Brower Center, an environmental hub in Berkeley, California, is hosting the exhibition Water, Rivers and People. With images (like this one) of soiled rivers, flooded towns, and citizens mourning the loss of their land, their loved ones and their livelihoods, this remarkable photography exhibit visually displays the human cost of dam…

With oil spilling out of the Gulf of Mexico, drought besieging West Africa’s Sahel region and more bad news about the increasingly instability of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the David Brower Center’s “Water, Rivers and People” exhibition is particularly timely. Presented in partnership with International Rivers and the Madera Group, the show pays homage…

Ari Derfel and Eric Fenster were not yet born in 1971 when Alice Waters opened the seminal Chez Panisse, paving the road that brought local, seasonal cooking into the mainstream. But with Gather, their 148-seat restaurant, these self-described “pathological optimists” are turning that road into something of a four-lane highway. “Food is a fundamental expression…

David Brower Building Wins For: Creating a Model Eco-Headquarters in Downtown Berkeley. Named after the pioneering East Bay environmentalist, Berkeley’s David Brower Center opened last May to provide a LEED-Platinum HQ for like-minded organizations. This eco-activist hub is home to an übersustainable restaurant, progressive art gallery, and 29 green tenants (see examples below). Half-hour tours…

The David Brower Center in Berkeley, California received the Best New Green Building award from the San Francisco Business Times. This is the third award bestowed upon the project in the last year. In May 2009, the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG)—a regional planning agency incorporating various local governments surrounding San Francisco—gave the David…

The David Brower Center in Berkeley is more of a green experience than just a green building. The center is home to a slew of environment education and sustainable advocacy nonprofit groups. In the lobby is the “building dashboard” screen, where visitors and tenants can see the building’s hourly use of electricity and natural gas,…

What this country needs are pristine landscapes and fine cars to drive through them at top speed (how gorgeous are Pacific sunsets glimpsed from twisty cliffside roads!). Seriously, how to reconcile these conflicting imperatives? David Maisel’s magnificent aerial photographs of the parched 200-square-mile Owens Lake (east of the Sierra Nevada, upslope from Los Angeles) proffer…

It pays to go green with new construction. According to the US Green Building Council (USGBC), green buildings cost no more to build—and sometimes less—when project teams take an integrated design approach that considers sustainability goals throughout the whole building lifecycle. Consider the example of a green office complex for environmental nonprofits in Berkeley, California.…

The demons of confusion are always with me at large-scale photo exhibitions of Sebastiao Salgado. They didn’t fail to come by during a recent visit to the David Brower Center Hazel Wolf Gallery. How am I to interpret this image? Am I seeing art, or reportage? Which sector of my brain is lighting up, or…

There’s a message in that name. Gather, the new 148-seat restaurant in downtown Berkeley’s David Brower Center, signals the gathering of community and local ingredients as well as recycled materials for its construction and design. Co-founders Ari Derfel (Back to Earth Organic Catering) and Eric Fenster brought vision to their values though Nicole Sillapere’s design,…