Overdevelopment of and within the European Alps is nothing new, and by my definition is the excessively intense building of any edifice(s) and infrastructure common to mountainous regions that impacts upon their aesthetic beauty and undermines the very reason they are visited. These may be sympathetically designed and sited or their antithesis, quite simply through…
Oetztal: How much did Auguste Piccard and Otzi shape the valley’s destiny?
A backward glance to 2014 and my time in the Oetztal region of the Austrian Tirol. Predominantly based in Obergurgl, I also journeyed to Soelden, Vent, Umhausen, and Oetz. Despite the at times indifferent weather but perpetually spectacular landscape and man's attempt to tame it for his own ends, this is an area of the…
For how long will the Winter Sports industry continue to justify the damage it does to the Alps?
Those who seek to debunk Climate Change and Global Warming will point to the ski season beginning earlier each year as justification for their controversial standpoint. What though is little known outside of the resorts open for business at this unseemly early stage in what is still, after all, the middle of autumn, and to…
Are the European Alps a fitting location for architectural experimentation?
For anyone who has seen the Top Mountain Star restaurant above Obergurgl-Hochgurgl or the glass cuboid Gaislachkogl top station in nearby Soelden, the latter whose use in the James Bond SPECTRE film has been mercilessly exploited by the lift operator, will already be of the opinion that the boundaries of conventional alpine design are not…
Proposed Oetztal-Pitztal link a potential benchmark for future development in the Austrian Alps
Controversy caused by the expansion of Austrian ski resorts is nothing new. The Alpine arms race continues unabashed, consisting of resorts intra-competing with neighbouring towns and those in adjacent valleys and provinces. There surely though has to be a time, which could already be upon us, when seeking an edge over the competition could reduce…
Alpine Adventures, Soccer, Central Asian Autocracies & Secessionist Politics 
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