David Brower Center

It was named in honor of David Brower, a Berkeley native, who was the first executive director of the Sierra Club and a backer of Marion Edey’s founding of the League of Conservation Voters.

[1][2] The center is part of a larger mixed-use development, that includes the Oxford Plaza (an affordable housing complex with street level commercial space).

The David Brower Center's mission is to "inspire and nurture current and future generations of leaders, with the goal of making sustainable thinking and practices mainstream."

In addition to housing nonprofit organizations, since 2009, the Hazel Wolf Gallery within the Brower Center has highlighted the work of many artists, including Sebastião Salgado, Daniel McCormick, David Liittschwager, Laura Cunningham, Isabella Kirkland, Chris Jordan, David Maisel, Jeffrey Long, Bill Curtsinger, Joseph Holmes, and more recently, Richard Misrach and Douglas Gayeton.

[5] In a post occupancy evaluation conducted by an architecture class at the University of California, Berkeley, over half of the questionnaire respondents said that the building was inspiring in regard to sustainability.

[6] The primary method for space conditioning is a hydronic, in-slab radiant system that is located in the exposed concrete ceiling slabs on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors.

On top of the David Brower Center, there is a 68 kilowatts (91 hp) photovoltaic array that offsets approximately 35 percent of the building's electricity energy demand.