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Architecture

Hydrologic Commonwealths for the American West, proposed by John Wesley Powell, 1879

Design for a Water-Scarce Future

Design strategies for arid regions go back centuries, but in the face of climate change, drylands design is a whole new ballgame

The rolling home of the future from the September, 1934 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics

Tomorrow’s Mobile Home

Moving is a lot easier if you live inside a giant ball

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Imagining a City of Treelike Buildings

Amid growing concerns that skyscrapers were blocking sunlight for people on the ground, a British architect proposed a novel solution

Growing up in multiple countries has allowed architect David Adjaye to always be highly sensitive to the cultural framework of different peoples in his designs.

Breaking Ground

Q&A: Architect David Adjaye On His Vision for the New Museum

The designer of the National Museum of African American History and Culture talks about his vision for the new building

Inside the church of San Pedro Apóstol is an ornate gold-leaf altar—earning it the moniker of "The Sistine Chapel of the Andes."

The Sistine Chapel of the Andes

Just miles from Peru’s Incan ruins lie artifacts from another era—beautiful Baroque churches that married Spanish design with indigenous culture

The Monuments That Were Never Built

In a new exhibit at the National Building Museum, imagine Washington D.C. as it could have been

How We Will Live Tomorrow

A Whole Town Under One Roof

We’re moving on up—visions of a self-contained community within a 1,000-foot tall skyscraper

The Colosseum, inaugurated in A.D. 80, seated 50,000 and hosted gladiatorial games, ritual animal hunts, parades and executions.

The Secrets of Ancient Rome’s Buildings

What is it about Roman concrete that keeps the Pantheon and the Colosseum still standing?

The view from 87 stories up includes the Oriental Pearl TV tower, center, the terraces of the Jin Mao Tower, left, and a metroplex growing to fit 23 million people.

Shanghai Gets Supersized

Boasting 200 skyscrapers, China’s financial capital has grown like no other city on earth – and shows few signs of stopping

Thomas Edison circa 1914

Thomas Edison’s Brief Stint As A Homemaker

The famous inventor envisioned a future of inexpensive, prefabricated concrete homes

Building Expectations

How do people decide what does or doesn’t look futuristic?

Life in a bubble: Westinghouse advertisement

Today at War, Tomorrow in Stores

Advertisers in the 1940s promised American consumers that they would be rewarded for their wartime sacrifices on the homefront

"Airships may give us a birds eye view of the city."

The Boston Globe of 1900 Imagines the Year 2000

A utopian vision of Boston promises no slums, no traffic jams, no late mail deliveries and, best of all, night baseball games

The Taj backs up against the once-vibrant Yamuna River, now often dried to the point where locals can walk in the riverbed.

Ask Smithsonian 2017

How to Save the Taj Mahal?

A debate rages over preserving the awe-inspiring, 350-year-old monument that now shows signs of distress from pollution and shoddy repairs

Peace Corps volunteer Laura Kutner rallied the community to stuff plastic bottles with trash. In all, the Guatemalan students turned 8,000 bottles into building materials.

How to Turn 8,000 Plastic Bottles Into a Building

Peace Corps volunteer Laura Kutner demonstrates how she turned trash into the building blocks for one community’s revival

The Ahwahnee Hotel was built in 1927 to draw affluent and influential tourists into the park and give them a Ritz-Carlton experience amid Yosemite's wilderness.

Yosemite’s Ahwahnee Hotel, Finally Restored

Interior designers spared no detail in bringing this historic lodge back to its luxurious origins

The missions—built between 1769 and 1823 and extending in a chain of 600 miles from Sonoma to San Diego—stand as symbols of California's Spanish colonial past. Pictured is San Miguel's bell tower.

A Tour of California’s Spanish Missions

A poignant reminder of the region’s fraught history, missions such as San Miguel are treasured for their stark beauty

Non-Muslims use a wood ramp to enter the complex, home to the gilded Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine, and the Western Wall, holy to Jews.

Ask Smithsonian 2017

What Is Beneath the Temple Mount?

As Israeli archaeologists recover artifacts from the religious site, ancient history inflames modern-day political tensions

"Right out the window is a kind of nature preserve all in itself," says T.C. Boyle in his Santa Barbara home.

The Wildlife of T.C. Boyle’s Santa Barbara

The author finds inspiration at the doorstep of his Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house near the central California town

During gladiatorial games in the arena, a vast network of man-powered machinery made animals and scenery appear from beneath a wooden floor as if by magic.

Secrets of the Colosseum

A German archaeologist has finally deciphered the Roman amphitheater’s amazing underground labyrinth

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