For over a decade, architects and engineers have been wrapping buildings in plants. Green façades and living walls have become symbols of sustainable design. They cool the air, soften concrete skylines and promise harmony between the built and natural world. But many of these buildings are now showing what happens when design ambition meets time, weather and water. As buildings age, green façades are revealing a simple truth: sustainability without engineering endurance doesn

On a late summer afternoon in 1882, Thomas Edison flipped a switch at J.P. Morgan’s Wall Street office and a single light bulb flickered to life. It was powered by the world’s first central power station, the Pearl Street Station in lower Manhattan. For the first time, a city district was illuminated by electricity generated and distributed from one location. The station's six steam-driven "Jumbo" dynamos supplied 110 volts of direct current to 59 customers, lighting 400 lamp

In 1904, New York City opened its first subway line, a 9.1-mile system from City Hall to Harlem that carried 100,000 people on its very...

We last looked at fire in July, when tragedy forced change. This month, we return to fire, not for disaster, but for invention. The...

In September 1987, computer scientist Charles Eastman published one of the first papers outlining the concept of Building Information...

In September 1975, the last tower of St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe housing development was demolished. Once celebrated as a bold new model for...