Photos: Where the building is the network

Web-based controls for lighting and temperature are broken down into microenvironments of three offices each. Employees access this online interface to vote for their preferred settings. You're out of luck if you're the only one in a three-office cluster to prefer icy temperatures, but there's still more control than in most of the world's workspaces.

"We changed the paradigm of what a building is, thinking of a building as a data network," said Steve Nguyen, Echelon's marketing director.

The system enables the company discover energy use patterns. For instance, people in marketing use more overhead lighting, while engineers rely upon desk lamps. The company can even tell when a coffee machine last brewed a pot. Quarterly energy audits help the company to tweak settings.