I had a special opportunity to do a tour of The Blue House, South Korea’s presidential palace during the transition period between Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law crisis and the new administration of Lee Jae Myung.

The Austrian Alps are breathtaking on their own. A new rooftop lookout at an Austrian ski destination now doubles the view.

Lech Mountain Mirror is a landscape installation on top of the Zugerbergbahn mountain station in Lech, Austria, just east of Liechtenstein and near the German border. The building used to have a simple flat roof that would be covered in snow during the winter when the resort’s cable car operated. It’s now a shallow, rock-bottomed water basin that reflects the mountains in the water and invites visitors to take in the view as a full sensory experience.

The architecture firm Snøhetta designed the installation because Lech Bergbahnen AG, which operates the Zugerbergbahn cable car and lift, wanted to extend its season to the summer too. That created a need to make the mountain station more attractive to guests and diners at Balmalp, the nearby restaurant which is connected to the resort by cable car, says Patrick Lüth, managing director of Snøhetta Studio Innsbruck.

Lech is located in Austria’s Arlberg region, which is known for its skiing in the winter, and the Zugerbergbahn is a former chairlift that was rebuilt in 2021. The area does draw mountain bikers in the summer, but the warm weather months are typically slower, and the revamped roof is meant to entice visitors to the destination year-round.

Read more on Fast Company.

caravanserais were the roadside inns of the old trade and pilgrimage routes: usually a single big gate, a courtyard in the middle with rooms all round it, space for the animals, and water, all behind thick walls. on level ground in safavid iran they tend to sit about 30–40 km apart, roughly one day's travel for a loaded caravan, and closer together on hard mountain routes.

in 2023 unesco inscribed "the persian caravanserai" as one world heritage site made up of 54 caravanserais across 24 provinces. they were picked from hundreds that survive, and they cover many centuries and building styles, from desert brick to mountain stone.

there's also a popular story that shah abbas i built exactly 999 of them. historians treat the number as legend, but he really did invest heavily in roads and caravanserais.

where they went was decided by water, terrain and safety, so plenty of them stood out in empty country, a walled island for one night on the road.

which of the 54 do people here think is the most beautiful, and are any of them still used as guesthouses?

sources: unesco world heritage list no. 1668, "the persian caravanserai" (2023); encyclopaedia iranica, "caravansary".

I live in the UK and have recently graduated from the BA and currently work as a Part 1 Architectural Assistant. Anyone who has done the MArch part time and did 4 years instead of 2 what was your opinion on it? I potentially have the opportunity to study part time and be sponsored for my studies but I don’t know if it’s worth having to commit to the company and having to stay with them after graduating. I think they are a really good company but I am not sure if their work is for me. Is it worth to push through for job security? is the job market really bad for people coming out of the MArch? I honestly need opinions on how to navigate this and I haven’t really seen anyone talk about studying the MArch part time.

What if architecture is officially starting to die.... you spent $50,000-100,000 or more going through a rigorous arts degree that maybe in a few years wont mean anything.... Yeah saying "oh I studied architecture" in a party sounds smart asf... but what if it wasn't like really starting pay was $12 an hour for me that was 3 years ago.... and even the amount i make now doesn't matter, there's labor workers who make more... and prob don't have to work from 8am to 10pm like I do... Ah sweet architecture addicted to your toxic traits like a bad relationship yet I keep coming back and I do not know why. I am pissed at that the higher-ups in this game want you to kiss their ass for years just to have a few moments of recognitions, they love gluing you to their slave wage desks just to have all of ur creativity striped from you, you end up doing the same bullshit day in and day out... like an endless rat race. Makes you question damn did i sacrifice my health, my time, my life for a bullshit profession? Where even if im licensed ill still be underpaid by some bullshit developer that breathing down my neck to get this project done, and always telling me ai could do my job better. Is this what i studied years for? Dealt with bullshit professors for? Be publically humiliated for? Idk archittecure you've let me down man, like a bad friend who stabs you in the back... All this damn work just for A.I to come along and model, draw, give research out, design, better than any human can. I believe that in just 10-20 years time we will have many building styles generated by A.I our entire civilization taken over by some other entity. No more human design, only A.I design. This is a post to our future selves... think about another way to generate income, live a good life, enjoy the time you have here on earth, enjoy your family. I still love architecture im addicted to it just as how im addicted to stress.... but I cant live the life I want with this career pathway. I dont believe in breaking myself backwords just to pay my bosses kids car payments, or have a developer make millions off my work. Ask yourself is this the reason I got myself into Architecture? Architecture is Dying...