Like other industries architecture has become increasingly globalized. It’s quite possible for a new building in Russia to be designed by an architect in New York, engineered at an office in Europe, and partially fabricated in workshops in China. While there are efficiencies and economies in building this way there’s also often a basic intelligence about a place that’s being lost, a native knowledge of landscape and climate that’s not finding its way back into construction. Great buildings look as if they were in exactly the right place, as if they were as deeply and broadly embedded in their surroundings as old trees. The projects in Extreme Architecture suggest that that they are.