A climate-resilient city can predict, withstand and recover from climate-related hazards — storms, heatwaves, floods — while maintaining its essential functions and keeping its population safe. Key attributes include a robust infrastructure, renewable energy integration, natural buffers like parks and wetlands, and proactive city planning. These are some of the factors that cities use to anticipate, … Read more
Thomas Hearts is one of the founders of an intentional-community in Socorro County, New Mexico, called Happy Castle Art Camp and they are gearing up to break ground on their very first Superadobe Earthbag Dome and they want you to be part of it. They are calling this the “Bonfire Dome” and a free natural-building … Read more
Carl Elefante’s Going for Zero: Decarbonizing the Built Environment on the Path to Our Urban Future broadens the horizon about how architecture can move toward a carbon-free future and achieve it. Elefante, who served as the 2018 National AIA president, writes about the valuable lessons that our built heritage can teach us. He is concerned … Read more
What if architecture didn’t just exist in nature, but behaved like it? That’s the provocation behind BIOTOPIA: Propagative Structures, the visionary installation by The Why Factory and artist Federico Díaz at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. The project imagines a future in which biology becomes the basis of design, and our cities are not just … Read more
Ellen Snortland and her husband have now lost a home to fire, another to flooding and another to a mudslide — and they’re tired of fighting the elements. “We are going to have to deal with extreme weather for the rest of our lives. To pretend otherwise is really folly,” she said. “I don’t see … Read more
Scientists in Germany have successfully turned urine into bio-concrete, as part of a project aiming to revolutionize sustainable construction by creating building materials from waste. The Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design at the University of Stuttgart, utilized microbial biomineralization, a biotechnological process where bacteria convert urea found in urine into calcium carbonate crystals. … Read more