Center for Architecture

The story

Two wells drilled 1,260 feet beneath a Greenwich Village sidewalk heat and cool this gallery dedicated to the built world. Construction crews spent three weeks in the summer of 2003 boring through gravel, pea stone, overburden soil, and bedrock before connecting the shafts into a closed geothermal loop. Architect Andrew Berman designed the center, which opened that October under the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. It has since grown into a cultural institution hosting revolving exhibitions on architecture, urban planning, and environmental design — practicing, in its own foundation, what it preaches above ground.