A number of notable buildings have defied time and nature to remain standing for remarkable durations. The architects of ancient buildings such as the Pantheon, a monumental temple almost two millennia old and still standing proudly in Rome, and the Hagia Sophia, a fifteen-hundred-year-old church in Istanbul, Turkey, were among the earliest to recognize the inherent structural strength of the dome. Ancient engineers in Japan also had some useful insights for constructing buildings, such as the thirteen-hundred-year-old temples that are the oldest wooden buildings in the world, that could make it through an earthquake without disastrously collapsing.

Many of the world's oldest buildings have survived through some combination of craftsmanship, preservation, and historical luck. Enhancing buildings' ability to remain erect, over time and through crises like earthquakes, is also a matter of design, materials, and technology. Promising recent advances include high-tech monitoring devices that...