Located within the most sustainable, multipurpose building in the United States, Apex Clean Energy’s new headquarters is a physical manifestation of the company’s mission to accelerate clean energy. It is, quite literally, a breath of fresh air.

No stranger to thinking big (their wind turbines, with diameters longer than football fields, are responsible for offsetting more than 500 million tons of CO2) Apex challenged the design team to create a space which inspires minds today and educates those for tomorrow.

A partial owner of the new building, Apex approached their design, holistically, honoring its place within the renewable energy community as well as the existing Charlottesville landscape. With an emphasis on clean energy and collaboration with a large team to execute their vision, Apex leveraged everyone’s strengths. A sustainability-driven architect, William McDonough + Partners, conceptualized the living, mass timber building, and FORM’s design team carried those concepts into the space, revealing as much timber as possible while hiding the infrastructure, conjuring an atmosphere of quiet remove. A hallmark collaboration feature is the lobby skylight which illuminates a stainless-steel, ‘true north’ line across the floor when the sun is overhead – representing the mission that Apex orients themselves around.

General Contractor: Hourigan
MEP Engineering: Staengl Engineers
Photography: Prakash Patel