Project profile: World Headquarters for IFAW

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is located on Cape Cod in Yarmouthport, Massachusetts, where it has pursued its work for thirty years. This project 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 new building is inspired by a Herreshoff "12 1/2" sailboat that might be seen 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.
(2009 AIA/COTE Top Ten Green Projects recipient)