architecture for extinction: where does nature go when its habitat disappears?

the loneliest plant on earth lives under glass

Inside London’s Kew Gardens, a cycad called Encephalartos woodii has spent more than a century beneath the glass roof of the Victorian Temperate House. Its enormous crown of dark green fronds appears perfectly healthy, though it may be one of the loneliest plants on Earth.

Discovered in South Africa in 1895, the species is known from a single wild individual. It was male. Every surviving specimen is a clone of that original plant, and a female has never been found. The species is now classified as Extinct in the Wild, while its descendants continue growing in botanical collections around the world.

Since 1899, Kew has kept its cycad alive. Yet the glasshouse cannot provide a mate or restore the forest it once inhabited. What, exactly, has been saved?

The question points to a growing architectural responsibility. As habitats disappear, buildings are increasingly being designed to shelter parts of the natural world from the environmental changes taking place outside.

In his 2014 book Flight Ways, environmental philosopher Thom van Dooren describes extinction as the ‘slow unravelling of intimately entangled ways of life.’ A species exists through its relationships with other organisms and the places they inhabit. Preserving an individual is one thing. Sustaining the complex ecological world that supports it is another.

the natural world moves indoors

At the foot of Oman’s Al Hajar Mountains, an enormous botanical garden is taking shape across 420 hectares of desert terrain. Designed by Grimshaw with Arup and Haley Sharpe Design, the Oman Botanic Garden will bring the country’s varied landscapes together, including the misty forests of Dhofar and the cooler mountain environments of the north.

Two sweeping glass biomes will recreate the conditions required by some of Oman’s most sensitive native plants. Cooling systems regulate the interior climates, while integrated shading controls the intense desert sunlight. Entire mountain environments are being reconstructed inside buildings, with the needs of endangered plant species informing their architectural design.

a miniature rainforest inside a breeding room

At Jersey Zoo, operated by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, an ordinary room lined with glass terrariums contains miniature tropical habitats for poison dart frogs. Each enclosure maintains the conditions required by its inhabitants, with sprinklers and fogging machines simulating the rainfall that encourages the animals to breed. For strawberry poison dart frogs, the process involves an extraordinary ritual: mothers transport their tadpoles into small pools of water held within bromeliad plants, returning periodically to feed them unfertilized eggs.

The dendrobatid breeding room, photographed by Matt Goetz in 2015, offers a glimpse into this manufactured ecology. Even the frogs themselves change under artificial conditions. In their native forests, poison dart frogs acquire their characteristic toxicity from the insects they consume. In captivity, a different diet leaves them largely harmless. The animals can survive and reproduce inside their miniature rainforests, though the chemistry of their bodies reveals how deeply their biology depends on the world beyond the glass.

The ocean is becoming another subject of architectural preservation. In Port Douglas, Australia, Great Barrier Reef Legacy’s Forever Reef Project maintains more than 225 coral species within controlled aquarium systems. A proposed Living Coral Biobank, designed by Contreras Earl Architecture with Arup, imagines a permanent home for the collection within a sculptural concrete building inspired by mushroom coral.

The proposal remains unrealized, while the existing facility continues operating. Its living colonies offer a glimpse of a future in which fragments of a reef survive through artificial systems, even as their original marine habitats become increasingly hostile.

preserving life in cold storage

Other facilities preserve life in a dormant state, retaining the possibility of future growth. At the Australian PlantBank in Mount Annan, designed by BVN and completed in 2013, mirrored facades reflect the surrounding vegetation. Visitors can look into research laboratories, while deeper inside, a temperature-controlled vault holds more than 100 million individual seeds.

The architecture resembles a scientific archive, its contents held in suspended animation. Seeds collected from threatened habitats can remain viable for decades, awaiting conditions that allow them to grow again.

At the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Frozen Zoo, established in 1975, the process becomes even more extraordinary. Here, living cells from endangered animals are preserved in cryogenic storage, sometimes long after the animals themselves have died.

In 1980, scientists froze cells belonging to a Przewalski’s horse named Kuporovitch. The horse died in 1998, but his genetic material survived. Forty years after the cells entered storage, they were used to produce a cloned foal named Kurt. A second foal, Ollie, followed in 2023.

Both horses carry genetic material that had become underrepresented in the surviving population. Their births offer a possible means of restoring genetic diversity to the endangered species.

The architecture behind this achievement is surprisingly ordinary. Inside laboratories and liquid-nitrogen storage vessels, the biological futures of animals are held in forms almost impossible to recognize as life.

a frozen archive beneath the arctic

On the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, a narrow concrete entrance emerges from a snow-covered mountainside, its angular form illuminated by an artwork from Norwegian artist Dyveke Sanne. Beyond this threshold, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault extends more than 100 meters into the rock, where agricultural seed collections from around the world are preserved at minus 18 degrees Celsius. Since its opening in 2008 the facility has safeguarded crop diversity against the loss of seed collections elsewhere, and has held the biological potential for future harvests deep within the Arctic landscape.

In 2015, its purpose was put to the test when conflict in Syria disrupted a major agricultural seed bank. Researchers retrieved seeds previously deposited at Svalbard and used them to rebuild collections in Lebanon and Morocco. The seeds were planted and multiplied, with some eventually returned to the vault. It is a rare example of an architectural archive whose contents have already helped regenerate what was lost, offering a glimpse of how biological preservation might support life far beyond the building’s walls.

who decides which species survive?

In their paper From Ark to Bank (2020), researchers Esther Breithoff and Rodney Harrison examine how these institutions are moving beyond passive preservation. They describe biological archives becoming ‘investment banks,’ where ‘genetic materials can be actively reworked and revived to build new futures.’

The familiar image of a modern Noah’s Ark becomes more complicated here. Preserved genetic material may eventually be used to shape future animal populations — this raises questions about who determines which species receive protection and how their biological material is used.

These decisions also depend on resources. Cryogenic storage requires reliable energy, while maintaining artificial habitats demands sustained funding. Thus, some forms of life are much easier to preserve than others.

This article is part of designboom’s POSTHUMAN UTOPIAS chapter, exploring what happens when humans are no longer the measure of all things. These stories rethink our relationship with the planet through interspecies architecture, living materials, regenerative landscapes and emerging technologies – learn more here! The chapter is presented in partnership with INDX|GLOBAL – a global cultural platform placing Indian architecture, design, and creative intelligence in conversation with the world.

Each designboom editorial series explores one theme in depth through projects, interviews, features and news across architecture, design, art and technology. Discover more chapters here, and get in touch if you’d like to submit a story through our submissions portal or contact form.

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