Harvesting rain Is now both smart design and smart building

As climate volatility increases, architects and urban designers face mounting water challenges. Well-designed rainwater harvesting systems can cut potable water use by up to 55% in commercial buildings and 30% in homes. With 36% of major cities now experiencing water stress—driven by rapid development and expanding hardscapes—rainwater is no longer just runoff, but a resource to design with.

How Indigenous-informed architecture reframes design as reciprocity.

Indigenous worldviews treat land, buildings, and communities as living relatives in a web of kinship, not as inert assets or technical problems to solve. When those worldviews lead design, architecture stops being a delivery mechanism for services and becomes a practice of renewing relationships—between people and place, past and future, human and more-than-human worlds.

How upcycling plentiful, underutilized biomass into building materials can help solve America’s housing crisis, create jobs, and boost domestic manufacturing

In a 1995 The Atlantic cover story, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute introduced the ultra-efficient, hybrid-ready “Hypercar” concept to a mass audience—two years before Toyota launched the Toyota Prius in Japan and five years before it reached global markets. In retrospect, the article anticipated a major shift in the auto industry.

War is not healthy for children, living things and centralized fossil fuel energy systems.

Once upon a time, Russia was the EU’s largest gas supplier, providing around 40–45% of its imported gas. Then Russia decided to invade Ukraine and gradually turned off the taps and saw key pipelines sabotaged, triggering a massive price shock that exposed just how dangerous it is to lean on giant fossil fuel projects that can be turned into weapons overnight.More recently, the war in Iran has hit a different set of fossil fuel chokepoints, with fighting around the Strait of Hormuz slowing or blocking shipments that normally carry about a fifth of the world’s oil and a large share of global LNG, driving up prices and forcing Europe back into crisis mode just a few years after the Ukraine shock.

How Finland reduced homelessness by more than 80 percent

In the United States, homelessness is usually treated as a behavioral problem to manage rather than a housing problem to solve. People are expected to get sober, stabilize, and find work before they are considered “ready” for a home. Finland reversed the sequence. There, a permanent home comes first. Only after someone has a door they can lock does the slower work of recovery and rebuilding begin. When housing stops being a reward for good behavior and becomes basic infrastructure, people finally have the stability to change their lives.

Dense urban housing can be beautiful, low‑carbon, and socially generous at the same time.

Kuokkalan Kalon, a newly completed timber residential block in Kuokkala, Finland, offers a glimpse of how cities can grow without losing their character—or their humanity. Built beside Kuokkala’s wooden church in the city of Jyväskylä, the project was designed to feel calm and house-like, fitting gently into the neighborhood while allowing the church to remain the visual landmark.

Design Matters

Design is often invisible but never neutral; it quietly shapes how we see, feel, and act together. It can make cynicism feel inevitable, or gently suggest that care is a given. The lines of a building, the way a room holds light, the ease or friction in a doorway or a website—all of these choices whisper instructions about what and who matters. When we move through environments that are coherent, gracious, and humane, it becomes easier to imagine that our shared life could be that way too.

How small design choices make public spaces truly public

We’ve talked before about how public libraries have become essential civic infrastructure. These highly trusted, low-barrier, mixed-use spaces are central to building social capital and strengthening communities.

Bamboo is reshaping commercial architecture.

Engineers and architects are promoting bamboo as a serious structural material for schools, airports and mid-rise towers, positioning it as a low‑carbon alternative to steel and concrete. Bamboo’s rapid growth, high strength-to-weight ratio and capacity to store carbon make it attractive for climate-friendly construction, especially in tropical regions where it is abundant.

As office attendance has yet to rebound, central libraries are bringing people and energy back to city centers.

Sociologist Eric Klinenberg defines social infrastructure as the physical places and organizations that shape how people interact in everyday life. When this infrastructure is strong—through well-used libraries, parks, and community centers—neighborhoods build social capital and become more resilient to shocks and inequality.

An ancient plant transformed into low-carbon building materials and recyclable products.

Biogenic materials are derived from living or recently living organisms—plants, animals, fungi, or microbes—and include materials such as timber, straw, hemp, cork, mycelium, and natural fibers. Compared with most fossil-based materials, they offer clear advantages in renewability, carbon storage, and reduced toxicity.

Architects are no longer treating health as an external requirement but as an integral condition of everyday life.

Designer, researcher, and educator, Olivia Poston, reports that in 2025, health became a guiding ethic in architecture—not a niche concern or performance overlay. Health now shows up as social, mental, environmental, planetary, and intergenerational well-being, embedded directly in how buildings are conceived, made, and lived in.