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.
A Frank Lloyd Wright classic finds a new home in the Arkansas Ozarks. In saving a historic building, relocation is usually the preservation strategy of last resort. But after repeated flooding at the original site in Millstone, New Jersey, architects and preservationists Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino felt that they had no other choice but to find someone who would purchase their Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian home and move it to higher ground. That higher ground turned out to be 1,260 miles away. After a prolonged international search, the Taratinos sold the Bachman-Wilson house in 2013 to Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton
Photo courtesy Passive House Institute A 16-unit apartment building (foreground) in Innsbruck, Austria, is the first of its kind to be certified under Passive House Plus—a new certification program that combines stringent efficiency standards with a renewable energy requirement. When the first Passive House building was built in Germany 25 years ago, the certification system raised the bar for energy efficient buildings by introducing a rigorous performance-based standard. This summer, the Passive House Institute in Darmstadt, Germany, has raised the bar higher with its certification of a multi-unit residential complex in Innsbruck, Austria, and a single-family home in Ötigheim, Germany,
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.