In the mid-1940s, long before the phrases “carbon footprint” and “green building” were coined, R. Buckminster Fuller urged people to lessen their environmental impact by taking up residence in aluminum-and-fiberglass geodesic domes. Construction of these shelters avoided the destruction of trees, and the domes required less energy to cool and heat compared to traditional rectangular buildings.

As NASA prepares to retire the space shuttle by the end of the decade, just in time for completion of the International Space Station, the tourism industry is planning to take its own giant leap into the void.

By itself, the image is not necessarily striking: a battered boxcar being hoisted into place at a construction site. Its power lies in knowing its history. The car, an exhibit at the new Museum of Memory and Tolerance, which opens next year in Mexico City, once transported Jews and other people destined for Nazi death camps in Poland during the Holocaust. 

The Gulf Opportunity Zone Act boosted a preservation tax credit to 26 percent, up from 20 percent. Although this incentive expires next year, it has spurred the repair of older buildings—and new developments are under way, too.

Is the Whitney Museum of American Art’s apparent construction curse site-specific?  Neighbors of the institution’s Brutalist home on Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side have rejected three ambitious proposals in 21 years to expand Marcel Breuer’s 1966 building. Now they’re chiding the institution for construction work that it has failed to do—even as plans for a new branch elsewhere show signs of moving ahead. 

Virtual architecture is on the verge of leaping from the computer screen into real life. Engineers and architects from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed a building made of water: a Digital Water Pavilion to be erected next summer at the 2008 World Expo in Zaragoza, Spain. Sponsored by the City of Zaragoza, the 5,000-square-foot, rectangular building will contain displays about the future of Zaragoza and its new technology-oriented Digital Mile district.

Hurricane Katrina devastates Gulf Coast region, severely compromises architectural landscape.