AUDEN SCHENDLER
Mountain Resort Maverick
When it comes to resort makeovers, all roads lead to Auden Schendler. The 36-year-old managing director of community and environmental responsibility for Aspen Skiing Company was the first to convert a major resort to 100 percent wind power; installed the industry's largest solar array; and tested water-free urinals (which flopped due to, er, sanitation issues). But his vision goes beyond Aspen: Last fall, on behalf of ASC, he filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting 12 states in the Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA, to force the federal government to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant.
—Megan Michelson

RICHARD COOK
Sustainable Architect
Air conditioning from giant vats of melting ice! Lights that turn on and off with the sun! Countertops of recycled glass! Such are the futuristic ingredients in Manhattan's One Bryant Park, a 54-story glass-and-steel monolith on track to become the country's greenest skyscraper. Designed by Richard Cook, 46, and his New York firm, Cook + Fox Architects, to comply with LEED's platinum standards (the U.S. Green Building Council's highest benchmark for sustainable buildings), OBP is outfitted with an on-site power plant, water tanks that catch and recycle rain, and a filtration system that strips 95 percent of lung-clogging particulates from interior air. When it's finished, in 2008, the 2.2-million-square-foot spire-topped tower will house Bank of America's New York headquarters, retail shops and restaurants, and a 1,000-seat Broadway theater. "I want people to feel in their bones that this is a fundamentally different building that's designed not just to sit there," Cook says, "but to interact with them—to remind them that they're part of the building and the building is part of the environment."
—Katie Arnold