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Architecture

Amager Resource Center, Copenhagen, Denmark. Under construction. This power plant, which turns household waste into electricity, is the cleanest in the world. "Normally, you want to be as far away from the power plant as possible because of the toxins, but in this case you literally have fresh mountain air on the roof of the building. Since we have snow in Denmark, but we don't have hills, we made the roof into a big ski slope," Ingels explains. The chimney puffs a giant steam ring each time a ton of carbon dioxide is emitted.

Designing Buildings For Hot Climates, Cold Ones and Everything in Between

A decade’s worth of sustainable projects by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels and his firm, BIG, are now on display at the National Building Museum

New Research

The Taj Mahal Gardens Have a Special Relationship to the Solstice

On the day the sun climbs the highest in the sky, careful alignments within the gardens and buildings of the beautiful mausoleum appear

The soaring choir at Beauvais Cathedral was first constructed in the 1200s.

New Research

Europe’s Great Gothic Cathedrals Weren’t Built Just of Concrete

The designers and builders of Europe’s great Gothic cathedrals weren’t actually so innovative

(Clockwise from top left) Katrin Macmillan, Ashutosh Saxena, Richard Lunt and Horace Luke are hard at work on exciting new projects.

Eight Innovators to Watch in 2015

From food science and robotics to solar tech and sustainable architecture, these folks are poised to do big things

After the devastating 2011 tsunami, the Japanese government spent billions of zen to build this sea wall along the Sendai Coastline. It's almost 20 miles long.

In an Era of Superstorms, This Exhibit Captures Our Shifting Relationship with the Earth’s Rising Seas

“Sink or Swim” shows how we’re learning to be smarter and more resilient in our response to increasingly unpredictable oceans and rivers

One of the hapless burglars in "Home Alone" unwittingly stepped on Christmas ornaments placed by Kevin

Cool Finds

Architects Analyze Kevin McCallister’s “Home Alone” Booby Traps

Overanalyze Home Alone in every way possible — and it still stands up, all these years later

New Research

Pollution Is Turning the Taj Mahal Brown

Workers must periodically cover the Taj Mahal in clay to remove the pollutants stuck to its marble walls

Sunrise at Red Rocks Park in Colorado

When America Invested in Infrastructure, These Beautiful Landmarks Were the Result

Explore eight of the Works Progress Administration’s most impressive structures.

The Hunger Games cornucopia from the first movie.

The Architecture of the Hunger Games’ Horns of Plenty

What inspired the architectural object at the center of the Hunger Games arena?

None

Cool Finds

Someone Just Bought an Entire Connecticut Ghost Town for $1.2 Million

Johnsonville was once a 62-acre mill village

Located on the Rhode River of the Chesapeake bay, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center's new laboratory building emits 37 percent less CO2 and cuts energy costs by 42 percent.

A New Environmental Science Lab Now Walks the Walk, Cutting Its Overall Emissions by 37 Percent

With geothermal heating, on-site water reclamation and a host of other energy saving technologies, the Smithsonian’s first LEED-Platinum building opens

The Annie Pfeiffer Chapel on the campus of Florida Southern College

Rebuilding a Frank Lloyd Wright Classic With 3-D Printed Blocks

A 70-year-old chapel on the campus of a Florida university is being restored thanks to new, innovative technology

A corridor leading to the infectious disease ward at Ellis Island's defunct hospital.

Cool Finds

Ellis Island Is Opening an Abandoned Hospital to the Public for the First Time in 60 Years

There are 29 abandoned buildings in all, several of which visitors can explore

Universal Studios in Hollywood has a stunt show and set inspired by the 1995 film Waterworld.

Anthropocene

10 Architectural Schemes That Could Help Us Adapt To Rising Seas

From a floating house to a mobile city shaped like a giant lilypad, designers offer up some wild solutions for a wetter future

The transparent solar concentrator material doesn’t block visible light, but turns light in other parts of the spectrum into electricity.

Tech Watch

This Clear Plastic Material Harvests Solar Energy Without You Even Knowing It’s There

Researchers are developing transparent solar collectors that let sunlight in, while turning ultraviolet and near-infrared light into electricity

Paris has spread along the banks of the Seine since 1900.

Age of Humans

Make Cities Explode in Size With These Interactive Maps

From Los Angeles to Lagos, see how megacities have been taking over the planet during the past 100 years

Artist Clement Valla finds irregularities in Google Earth imagery and compiles his findings in a series, "Postcards from Google Earth." This landscape is in Italy.

This Artist Finds Strange Beauty in Google’s Apocalyptic Glitches

Clement Valla makes art out of Google Earth’s surrealist irregularities

Till death do us part: This couple has been holding hands for 700 years.

Cool Finds

This Skeleton Couple Has Been Holding Hands for 700 Years

The couple’s remains are just one of the discoveries recently made in the “lost chapel” of St. Morrell

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse, Pemaquid Peninsula, Maine

Maine’s Most Interesting Lighthouses

Shipwrecks, poetry and alien encounters: The lighthouses dotting Maine’s coast pack a double punch of beauty and history

Cool Finds

Some Zoo Grass Is Electrified

Some zoo landscaping is designed to keep the animals within their cages, not for them to interact with

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