[Image: View larger! From “Celestial Detector,” 2025 Lisbon Architecture Triennale; all text by Geoff Manaugh, all images by John Becker/WROT Studio.] I had a new piece of short fiction commissioned by the 2025 Lisbon Architecture Triennale that was just published last week over at e-flux. The theme of the Triennale this year is “How Heavy &#8230; <a href="https://bldgblog.com/2025/09/celestial-detector/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Celestial Detector"</span></a>

In an otherwise unpromisingly-titled article—“Could the US really release more of its strategic oil reserves?”—the Financial Times points out a surprising architectural vulnerability of the U.S. Strategic Oil Reserve. “The U.S. Strategic Oil Reserve is a series of vast, subterranean salt caverns in four different sites in Louisiana and Texas,” the article explains. “Many are &#8230; <a href="https://bldgblog.com/2026/03/contextual-collapse/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Contextual Collapse"</span></a>

I was in Maastricht, Netherlands, for a couple nights last week, mostly as a way to break-up my trip across the Atlantic and thus help get over jet-lag before attending an archaeology conference (where I currently type this). I went specifically to Maastricht, however, because it’s home to an astonishing number of subterranean sites, from &#8230; <a href="https://bldgblog.com/2025/09/37929/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Star Forts, Mines, and Other Maastricht Subterranea"</span></a>

I’ve mentioned the following story to so many people, I thought I might as well put up a quick post about it. There are strong Kristian Birkeland vibes with this—and, of course, anything involving an entire mountain transformed into a kind of passive-cosmic megamachine is bound to get my attention. [Image: Watercolor by Karl Lemström, &#8230; <a href="https://bldgblog.com/2026/03/the-landscape-architecture-of-auroras-on-demand/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "The Landscape Architecture of Auroras on Demand"</span></a>

A few weeks ago, The Economist looked at the growing problem of “ubiquitous technical surveillance” in the field of espionage. It describes the difficulty of maintaining a rigorous or believable cover story, for example, when genealogy websites might be consulted by adversarial border agents to verify that a potential spy is who she says she &#8230; <a href="https://bldgblog.com/2025/07/seer/" class="more-link">Continue reading<span class="screen-reader-text"> "Seer"</span></a>