Nathaniel Kahn shares clips from his documentary "My Architect," about his quest to understand his father, the legendary architect Louis Kahn. It's a film with meaning to anyone who seeks to understand the relationship between art and love.

How will we live elsewhere in the galaxy? On Earth, natural resources for creating structures are abundant, but sending these materials up with us to the Moon or Mars is clunky and cost-prohibitive. Enter architect Xavier De Kestelier, who has a radical plan to use robots and space dust to 3D print our interplanetary homes. Learn more about the ...

In a wildly entertaining discussion with Richard Saul Wurman, architect Frank Gehry gives TEDsters his take on the power of failure, his recent buildings, and the all-important "Then what?" factor.

The year is 432 BCE. As dawn breaks over Athens, Pheidias is already late for work. He is the chief builder for the Parthenon — Athens' newest and largest temple— and when he arrives onsite, city officials accuse him of embezzling gold from the temple's sacred central statue. He has until sundown to prove his innocence or face the courts. Mark R...

Stairs don't just get you from point A to point B. Architect David Rockwell explains how they shape your movement -- and your feelings.

Green-minded architect and designer William McDonough asks what our buildings and products would look like if designers took into account "all children, all species, for all time."

Architect Norman Foster discusses his own work to show how computers can help architects design buildings that are green, beautiful and "basically pollution-free." From the 2007 DLD Conference, Munich; www.dld-conference.com

Looking back over his long career, architect Moshe Safdie delves into four of his design projects and explains how he labored to make each one truly unique for its site and its users.

Architect Joshua Prince-Ramus takes the audience on dazzling, dizzying virtual tours of three recent projects: the Central Library in Seattle, the Museum Plaza in Louisville and the Charles Wyly Theater in Dallas.

Architect Thom Mayne has never been one to take the easy option, and this whistle-stop tour of the buildings he's created makes you glad for it. These are big ideas cast in material form.

Can cellphones influence architecture? Architect Marc Kushner, author of a new book, 'The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings' thinks so—especially as more people look to take selfies with interesting backgrounds. His book showcases 100 buildings that capture what he sees as the future of architecture. — The Wall Street Journal About the bo...

Danish architect Bjarke Ingels rockets through photo/video-mingled stories of his eco-flashy designs. His buildings not only look like nature -- they act like nature: blocking the wind, collecting solar energy -- and creating stunning views.

What would it take to live on Mars? In an imaginative talk, architect Bjarke Ingels shares his prototype Martian "city" in Dubai, where they're building technologies that humanity would need to thrive on the Red Planet.

In this engrossing EG talk, architect Liz Diller shares her firm DS+R's more unusual work, including the Blur Building, whose walls are made of fog, and the revamped Alice Tully Hall, which is wrapped in glowing wooden skin.

Lighting architect Rogier van der Heide offers a beautiful new way to look at the world -- by paying attention to light (and to darkness). Examples from classic buildings illustrate a deeply thought-out vision of the play of light around us.

Every day, in a city the size of London, 30 million meals are served. But where does all the food come from? Architect Carolyn Steel discusses the daily miracle of feeding a city, and shows how ancient food routes shaped the modern world.

Before he was a legend, architect Frank Gehry takes a whistlestop tour of his early work, from his house in Venice Beach to the American Center in Paris, which was under construction (and much on his mind) when he gave this talk.

A future more beautiful? Architect Thomas Heatherwick shows five recent projects featuring ingenious bio-inspired designs. Some are remakes of the ordinary: a bus, a bridge, a power station ... And one is an extraordinary pavilion, the Seed Cathedral, a celebration of growth and light.

Building a skyscraper? Forget about steel and concrete, says architect Michael Green, and build it out of … wood. As he details in this intriguing talk, it's not only possible to build safe wooden structures up to 30 stories tall (and, he hopes, higher), it's necessary.

At this school in Tokyo, five-year-olds cause traffic jams and windows are for Santa to climb into. Meet: the world's cutest kindergarten, designed by architect Takaharu Tezuka. In this charming talk, he walks us through a design process that really lets kids be kids.

Does a school for the deaf need to be quiet? Architect Marcus Adrian explains how the answer put him on the road to identifying a key element of designing for accessibility -- understanding the spectrum of human ability and celebrating what people do well instead of focusing on what they can't.

In 1985, architect Paul Pholeros was challenged to "stop people getting sick" in a small indigenous community in south Australia. And it meant thinking way beyond medicine. In this sparky, interactive talk, Pholeros shares his work with Healthabitat, which works to reduce poverty through practical design fixes -- in Australia and beyond.

What would a city designed for the blind be like? Chris Downey is an architect who went suddenly blind in 2008; he contrasts life in his beloved San Francisco before and after -- and shows how the thoughtful designs that enhance his life now might actually make everyone's life better, sighted or not.

In this short, provocative talk, architect Alison Killing looks at buildings where death and dying happen -- cemeteries, hospitals, homes. The way we die is changing, and the way we build for dying ... well, maybe that should too. It's a surprisingly fascinating look at a hidden aspect of our cities, and our lives.

TED Fellow Lucy McRae is a body architect -- she imagines ways to merge biology and technology in our own bodies. In this visually stunning talk, she shows her work, from clothes that recreate the body's insides for a music video with pop-star Robyn, to a pill that, when swallowed, lets you sweat perfume.

Designer and architect Neri Oxman is leading the search for ways in which digital fabrication technologies can interact with the biological world. Working at the intersection of computational design, additive manufacturing, materials engineering and synthetic biology, her lab is pioneering a new age of symbiosis between microorganisms, our bodie...

Landscape architect Kate Orff sees the oyster as an agent of urban change. Bundled into beds and sunk into city rivers, oysters slurp up pollution and make legendarily dirty waters clean -- thus driving even more innovation in "oyster-tecture." Orff shares her vision for an urban landscape that links nature and humanity for mutual benefit.

Mars is humanity's next destination. We keep talking about it, but what would it really be like to live there?

Chris Downey is an architect who lost his sight and gained a new way of seeing the world.

Taking inspiration from nature, architect Ma Yansong designs breathtaking buildings that break free from the boxy symmetry of so many modern cities. His exuberant and graceful work -- from a pair of curvy skyscrapers that "dance" with each other to an opera house that looks like a snow-capped mountain -- shows us the beauty of architecture that ...