The iconic twin towers of downtown Manhattan's World Trade Center were a triumph of human imagination and will. Completed in 1973, the towers stood at 110 stories each, accommodating 50,000 workers and 200,000 daily visitors in 10...

[Free Registration/Login Required] An informational text about six famous landmarks: Mount Rushmore, Machu Picchu, the Great Sphinx, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Great Wall of China, and the Sydney Opera House. A question sheet is...

[Free Registration/Login Required] An informational text about the Campanile, the bell tower at the University of California. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.

[Free Registration/Login Required] An informational text about the Leaning Tower of Pisa, what causes it to lean, and what scientists did to keep it from falling. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading...

[Free Registration/Login Required] An informational text about the Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwelling people. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.

PBS site provides videos and activities are hands-on challenges that focus on the engineering design process. They use simple materials, allow for multiple solutions, and are ideal for ages 9-12.

A good reference for information on the World Trade Center, this page has information about the buildings, including measurements and construction dates. This would be a good place to start researching the World Trade Center.

The BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir temple on a highway north of Toronto is an architectural wonder. It opened in 2007 to much fanfare. How it is constructed is described here. The building uses no steel, only stone and traditional Vedic...

Build the tallest tower possible from stale marshmallows and spaghetti, which will support the weight of a toy gorilla. Make improvements on the design so that it is as stable as possible while keeping the cost of materials within a...

At 555 feet high the Washington Monument towers over the National Mall and is the tallest stone building in the world today. Read the history of this monument in this essay.

The icon depicts the Holy Family in Egypt. The Holy Virgin is sitting on a horse, and her head is surrounded by an aureole. Saint Joseph the Carpenter, leader of the journey, holds his staff in his hand and carries the Infant Jesus on...

The Twin Towers were the centerpieces of the World Trade Center complex. At 110 stories each, 1 WTC (North Tower) and 2 WTC (South Tower) provided nearly 10-million-square feet of office space for about 35,000 people and 430 companies....

After the jets hit, stairwells became the sole means of escape for thousands of WTC occupants. But design choices hampered full evacuation -- and made the descent even more harrowing. The stairs in the twin towers were a product of their...

Students construct a shake table, then build towers of different heights using Lego blocks, and test their stability on this platform. Next, they test towers with different sized bases, and towers made using different materials.

The original World Trade Center was a large complex of seven buildings in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. It featured the landmark Twin Towers, which opened on April 4, 1973, and were destroyed in 2001 during the September...

Kaiping Diaolou and Villages feature the Diaolou, multi-storeyed defensive village houses in Kaiping, which display a complex and flamboyant fusion of Chinese and Western structural and decorative forms. They reflect the significant role...

Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world, standing at an incredible 828 metres tall (2717 feet) it towers above Dubai, UAE. It includes 160 floors and was officially opened in 2010. This photo of Burj Khalifa is set against a...

The Cultural Sites of Al Ain (Hafit, Hili, Bidaa Bint Saud and Oases Areas) constitute a serial property that testifies to sedentary human occupation of a desert region since the Neolithic period with vestiges of many prehistoric...

Built by the Moors in a defensive position at the heart of the Caliphate of Cordoba, Cuenca is an unusually well-preserved medieval fortified city. Conquered by the Castilians in the 12th century, it became a royal town and bishopric...

The inscribed property is situated 10 km south of Jerusalem on the site identified by Christian tradition as the birthplace of Jesus since the 2nd century. A church was first completed there in ad 339 and the edifice that replaced it...

A seven-part annotated slideshow about one of Wright's last masterpieces, the Beth Sholom Synagogue. Slate's architecture critic Witold Rybczynski explains what makes Wright's design such a significant and successful expression of...

The 53 m high tomb built in ad 1006 for Qabus Ibn Voshmgir, Ziyarid ruler and literati, near the ruins of the ancient city of Jorjan in north-east Iran, bears testimony to the cultural exchange between Central Asian nomads and the...