As the principal of China's largest landscape architecture firm and head of Peking University's architecture and landscape architecture department, Kongjian Yu has a spacious corner office in a sleek office building in Beijing's Haidian district.

The rebuilding of New Orleans 10 years after Hurricane Katrina is as patchwork and kaleidoscopic as the city itself.

A new certification system for buildings places the occupants at the center of sustainable design.

While bottom-feeding architects are as old as the profession itself, the business challenges facing most mainstream firms are unprecedented.

The Passive House concept for ultra-low-energy buildings first developed in the United States during the 1970s energy crisis, only to be adopted and refined into a codified certification system in Germany, after funding in this country dried up. But, like a prodigal son, Passive House has reemerged in the U.S., with use of the certification system steadily gaining ground over the last decade.