Living in a calm, safe and relaxing place is decisive for greater life satisfaction.

Light, paint, patterns and other design elements affect your mood.

It was hard to miss last week’s RTC Clean Energy and Transportation Summit. Along with elected officials, utility executives and regulators, businesspeople, union representatives, and academics, there were electric buses parked out front.

Las Vegas is the fastest-warming city in the country because of a changing climate and a heat island that grows with the community.

Temperatures have risen in almost every city in the United States since 1970, but no metropolitan area is heating up as quickly as Las Vegas.

UNLV students design solar powered home for desert living meant to be a place of healing and respite for veterans suffering the adverse effects of wartime trauma; the home connects the resident to their environment through a carefully orchestrated procession of sensory experiences.

Having a panoramic view of the outdoors is pleasing on a biological level, according to Dak Kopec, associate professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It relates back to our desire to have “prospect refuge,” or the ability to see our surroundings from a single safe area.

For nearly a century, Reno took pride in being the Biggest Little City in the World. As a growth spurt brings in skyrocketing housing costs and a host of other challenges, however, some say it’s time for Reno to start thinking, well, big.

The U.S. Department of Energy has announced the collegiate teams that will be competing in the Solar Decathlon Build Challenge. Student participants work during a two-year period to design and build complete, functional houses that are powered by renewable energy and demonstrate creative solutions to current issues in the industry. Winners will be selected in the summer of 2020 in Washington, D.C., as part of the 2020 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

UNLV was one of just 11 universities worldwide chosen to compete in the 2020 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. The international contest challenges university student teams to design, build and operate solar-powered homes that are energy-efficient, affordable and attractive.

It was anything but a straight line that brought the new head of UNLV’s School of Architecture to campus.

Last month, second-year students at the UNLV School of Architecture gathered to present a beguiling exhibit of their work for the semester. Demonstrative Architecture: Apotheosis of the Unfamiliar is not an exhibit of buildings with a program, but something far more ethereal. Students explored a variety of forms and ideas in wood, cardboard, and glycerine. They then tried to translate these forms into structures that suggested not a building program but an emotional state.