When complete, DUS Architects’ canal house will resemble a traditional Dutch home. The firm has encouraged the public’s involvement, inviting visitors to see the printer in action. The house is printed piece by piece. A chunk of one room features an intricate tessellation-like pattern. In the summer of 1908, Thomas Edison filed a patent for a contraption that could construct a house—bathtubs and all—with a single pour of concrete. 

Divining rods—really, just forked sticks—supposedly tremble when you hold them over any ground that conceals water below. Whether or not you subscribe to their seemingly magical, analog effectiveness, you might be thinking, isn't there an app for that? 

Nearly 100 yards lie between Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and Lake Michigan. So when Goettsch Partners began the design of a subterranean hall to exhibit the museum’s German-made U-505 submarine, the architects found themselves in the unlikely—and ironic—position of fighting to keep the lake’s water from submerging the vessel. 

When commissioned to design the facade and interior of the Institute of Molecular Genetics for the Czech Academy of Science, the Prague-based firm Studio P-H-A decided to add some bling to biomedicine. Responding to the standard-issue rectilinear volume designed by fellow Czech firm Atelier Ypsilon, architects Jan Sesták and Marek Deyl appended a glittering steel staircase that takes the form of DNA’s double helix.

A building that produces all the energy it requires, without sacrifices to its operations or concessions of human comfort, might sound like pie in the sky. But according to the New Buildings Institute (NBI), 160 commercial and institutional buildings in the U.S. are targeting or have achieved net zero energy—meaning that, over the course of a year, they produce at least as much energy from renewable sources as they consume. 

Digital fabrication has been employed in the production of everything from furniture and lighting to jewelry and cell phones, but its use for large-scale construction has been rare.

The artist toiling in solitude has long been a romantic ideal. But it rarely holds in reality, especially for those who work at the civic scale, making pieces that straddle the blurry boundary between art and architecture. These artists rarely work alone, typically relying on a host of collaborators to realize their visions, including studio assistants, fabricators, and even city officials.

 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. 

Fact or fiction, it is a common perception that the design and construction process is plagued with problems: cost and schedule overruns, under-detailed design drawings, shoddy workmanship, disputes, and litigation.