5,208 articles
Laminate flooring
Laminate flooring is a rigid floor covering of a printed wood or stone image under a hard wear layer, invented in Sweden in 1977 and installed as a floating floor.
Laminated veneer lumber
Laminated veneer lumber (LVL) is an engineered wood product made by bonding thin wood veneers with parallel grain, stronger and more uniform than solid timber.
Lamu Port
Lamu Port is a deep-water seaport at Manda Bay in Lamu County, Kenya, and the maritime anchor of the LAPSSET Corridor linking Kenya, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.
Lancaster House
Lancaster House, once called Stafford House, is a 19th-century former aristocratic palace near Buckingham Palace, now run by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office as a venue for government hospitality, conferences, and international summits.
Landfill gas collection
Landfill gas collection is the extraction of methane-rich gas from decomposing landfill waste through wells and piping, so it can be flared or used as fuel.
Landfill leachate
Landfill leachate is the liquid that has passed through solid waste in a landfill, carrying organic matter, ammonia, heavy metals, and PFAS that must be collected and treated.
Landing (stairway)
A landing is a level platform in or at a stairway, providing a floor at each flight's end and letting stairs change direction or climb rest.
Landmark 81
Landmark 81 is a 461.2 m, 81-storey supertall skyscraper in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, opened in 2019 as the tallest building in Vietnam and, at completion, Southeast Asia.
Landscape architecture
Landscape architecture is the profession that analyzes, plans, and designs outdoor spaces like parks, gardens, campuses, and waterfronts; the term became common after 1863, when Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed New York's Central Park.
Landscape urbanism
Landscape urbanism is a theory of urban design that treats landscape rather than buildings as the primary medium of the city, coined by Charles Waldheim in 1996.
Landwasser Viaduct
The Landwasser Viaduct (Landwasserviadukt) is a 65-meter-high masonry railway viaduct near Filisur in Graubünden, Switzerland, built in 1902 on the Rhaetian Railway's UNESCO-listed Albula Line.
Langkawi Sky Bridge
The Langkawi Sky Bridge (Malay: Jambatan Udara Langkawi) is a 125-meter curved pedestrian cable-stayed bridge on Gunung Mat Cincang in Langkawi, Malaysia, opened in 2005 and hanging about 660 meters above sea level.
Langwieser Viaduct
The Langwieser Viaduct is a single-track reinforced concrete railway viaduct near Langwies in Graubünden, Switzerland, carrying the Rhaetian Railway's Chur–Arosa line across the Plessur valley.
Lanhydrock House
Lanhydrock House is a Grade I listed country house near Bodmin, Cornwall, built by the Robartes family from 1620, gutted by fire in 1881, rebuilt by Richard Coad, and owned by the National Trust since 1953.
Lanterna di Genova
The Lanterna di Genova is the main lighthouse of the port of Genoa, Italy, rebuilt in 1543 and the tallest lighthouse in the Mediterranean, second tallest in Europe.
Las Huelgas (Burgos)
Las Huelgas is a Cistercian nunnery in Burgos, Spain, founded in 1187 by King Alfonso VIII of Castile and serving as a royal pantheon and coronation church.
Lateral-torsional buckling
Lateral-torsional buckling is a beam instability in which the compression flange buckles sideways and the beam twists, reducing strength below its cross-sectional capacity in steel design.
Lath and plaster
Lath and plaster is a building technique for finishing interior walls and ceilings, in which wet plaster is applied over thin timber lath and held by hardened keys.
Launching gantry
A launching gantry, also called a launching girder or launcher gantry, is a self-propelled overhead steel truss that erects precast segmental bridges without ground cranes.
Lawrence G. Griffis
Lawrence G. Griffis, known as Larry Griffis, is an American structural engineer at Walter P Moore in Houston, elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003.
Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier, born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret in Switzerland in 1887, was a Swiss-born French architect and leading figure of twentieth-century modern architecture, known for Villa Savoye and Chandigarh.
Le Méridien
Le Méridien, also known as Le Méridien Hotels and Resorts, is a hotel brand founded by Air France in 1972 and now owned by Marriott International.
Leachate
Leachate is the contaminated liquid that has passed through or emerged from solid waste, generated in landfills when water infiltrates waste and picks up pollutants.
Lead contamination in Washington, D.C., drinking water
Lead contamination in Washington, D.C., drinking water was a crisis from 2001 to 2004, when a switch to chloramine disinfection corroded lead service lines and raised lead levels fivefold.
Lead rubber bearing
A lead rubber bearing (LRB) is a seismic isolation device with a lead core, developed in New Zealand in the early 1970s by W. H. Robinson.
Leaning Tower of Pisa
The Leaning Tower of Pisa (Torre pendente di Pisa) is the freestanding bell tower of Pisa Cathedral in Pisa, Italy, famous for its unintended tilt.
Learning from Las Vegas
Learning from Las Vegas is a 1972 book by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour studying the Las Vegas Strip's commercial architecture and signage.
LEED
LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a green building rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, launched in 1998, with certification levels from Certified to Platinum.
Leeds and Liverpool Canal
The Leeds and Liverpool Canal is a 127-mile broad-beam canal in northern England linking Leeds with Liverpool across the Pennines, authorised in 1770 and completed in 1816.
Leeds Castle
Leeds Castle is a Grade I listed castle in Kent, England, built on two islands in the River Len and restored in the 1930s by Lady Baillie.