The Most High-Tech Green Buildings

In England there is a building made with insulation that can be inflated or deflated to adjust to outside temperatures. In Germany there is a house designed to be easily disassembled and recycled. The New York Times Co. building is draped in shades that automatically adjust to the movement of the sun. In Milwaukee a museum changes its very shape to shade itself.

The point of a building is to keep its inhabitants comfortable: Humans want to be warm (but not too warm) and dry. The problem comes in providing heating or cooling, and replacing the light lost when the sun is shut out. The solutions are becoming ever more creative.

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"Heat and light are the things people are most concerned about, and they are the things that take energy," says Brendon Levitt, an architect with the San Francisco Bay Area firm Loisos + Ubbelohde, which specializes in so-called high-performance buildings. He also teaches construction technology at California College of the Arts.

To keep people comfortable and happy in a way that limits the amount of energy needed, architects and engineers are coming up with new materials, technology and approaches to building design, construction and management