Articles by Michael Cockram

Three firms collaborate to expand and renovate a popular high school in Arkansas.

A diverse set of projects demonstrates that a building’s skin can be transformed into a solar power plant.

Architects spend a great deal of time making sure their buildings stay put. But the whims of nature and real-estate development can uproot the best of plans and make relocating an important structure the only way to save it.

One evening in September, an American couple traversing Europe camped after dark in a national park near Sundholmen, Sweden, along the Finnish border.

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 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. 

 In landscape architect Thomas Balsley's view, it's time to rethink common notions about the role of parks and open space. “Often considered a luxury, parks should be viewed as providing an essential service—as infrastructure that makes communities more resilient,” he says.