9 Stories of Hope for Earth Day 2026

The Power of Built Buildings

“There continues to be an assumption that if we’re going to talk about buildings, building technologies, specifically building assemblies, building construction, we’re talking about new buildings,” points out Billie Faircloth, cofounder and research director of the Built Buildings Lab. “But what can we learn from the buildings that already exist?” One lesson is the enduring value of building materials. In Switzerland, Barbara Buser is sought after by developers, urban planners, and city governments for her expertise in creating new buildings out of old. “Sometimes I say we should stop construction for ten years,” Buser told our reporter Vera Sachhetti, “and develop other ways to go about it, namely how to find material; how to classify it; how to check, test, and so on.” The other lesson is that our buildings are palimpsests of our values and aspirations as a society. CannonDesign recently completed a $169 million renovation of the Gregory Bateson Building in Sacramento California; what they preserved is the vision of the original architect, Sim Van der Ryn, whose approach to sustainability seems uncannily prescient 45 years later.

Re-centering Nature in Design

“The next chapter of biophilic design will see architectural typologies evolving into truly living systems,” predicts Rick Cook, founding partner, COOKFOX Architects. “Where earlier strategies focused on adding plants or maximizing daylight, the next generation must embed nature at every level of design—from dynamic lighting to habitat productivity, even at the scale of the Aero Biome.” The products and systems for this biocentric vision of the built environment are being tested, scaled, and analyzed: once-experimental materials like mycelium have hit the mainstream, while the benefits of incorporating biomass in buildings and integrating buildings into landscapes are being clearly quantified.

Designing for Care and Repair

“I am interested in the integration of natural law, and I’m interested in passive design. And I think those two, by themselves, are all of the sustainability I care to talk about,” says Wanda Dalla Costa, principal at Tawaw and the first First Nations woman to to be licensed to practice architecture in Canada. Indigenous communities have historically seen humanity and the rest of nature as connected through kinship, recognizing the interconnectedness of all living things. In today’s world, this approach should encompass both extreme care—perhaps something like the Shakers practiced as they crafted beautiful objects for their communities—and the humility to allow nature to heal, as the Reserva Peñitas project is doing in Mexico.

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• biobased materials
• Biophilic Design
• Climate Adaptation
• Earth Day
• Indigenous
• Water

• Architecture
• Sustainability