Architecture for Extinction: How Buildings Are Becoming Sanctuaries for Endangered Species

Key facts

• Encephalartos woodii at Kew Gardens is a cycad known from a single male specimen discovered in South Africa in 1895; all surviving plants are clones.
• The Oman Botanic Garden, designed by Grimshaw with Arup and Haley Sharpe Design, spans 420 hectares and will include two glass biomes recreating Dhofar's misty forests and northern mountain environments.
• At Jersey Zoo's dendrobatid breeding room, poison dart frogs are kept in glass terrariums with sprinklers and fogging machines; captive frogs are largely harmless due to a different diet.
• The Forever Reef Project in Port Douglas, Australia, maintains more than 225 coral species; a proposed Living Coral Biobank by Contreras Earl Architecture with Arup is unrealized.
• The Australian PlantBank in Mount Annan, designed by BVN and completed in 2013, stores more than 100 million seeds in a temperature-controlled vault.
• The Frozen Zoo at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, established in 1975, froze cells from a Przewalski's horse named Kuporovitch in 1980; cloned foals Kurt and Ollie were born from this material, Ollie in 2023.
• The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, opened in 2008, extends over 100 meters into a Norwegian mountainside and preserves seeds at minus 18 degrees Celsius.
• In 2015, seeds from Svalbard were used to rebuild collections in Lebanon and Morocco after conflict disrupted a Syrian seed bank.