New York City’s Brooklyn-Queens Expressway is falling apart. Built between 1946 and 1964, the urban highway runs 12.1 miles through the heart of the two boroughs to connect on either end with the interstate highway system—a relic of midcentury car-oriented infrastructure, and a prime example of the dwindling lifespan of roads built during that time.  The degradation is most visible—and most pressing—in a section running alongside Brooklyn Heights known as the triple cantilever. This 0.4-mile section, completed in 1954, is unique among U.S. highways in that it juts out from the side of a hill and stacks the two directions of traffic on balcony-like decks, one slightly overhanging the other. A third level holds a well-loved park, the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.  This unusual layer cake of a freeway was a marvel of engineering in its day, though not without controversy. Masterminded by Robert Moses, the city’s all-powerful, often ruthless city planner for more than four decades, the roadway bisects working-class and immigrant neighborhoods that grapple with the health and environmental fallout to this day. Like the reputation of the man who built it, the triple cantilever has aged poorly. Its narrow width, (33.5 feet for the roadway in either direction) has made all but the most basic maintenance incredibly difficult, and its 71-year-old structure is constantly battered by the ever heavier automobiles and trucks. Designed to accommodate around 47,000 vehicles per day, it now carries more than three times that amount. Deteriorating deck joints and failing steel-reinforced concrete have led many to worry the triple cantilever is on the verge of collapse. An expert panel warned in 2020 that the triple cantilever could be unusable by 2026, and only then did interim repairs get made to keep it standing. [Photo: Alex Potemkin/Getty Images] The mounting concern comes amid a 50-year decline in direct government spending on infrastructure in the U.S., according to a recent analysis by Citigroup. Simply maintaining existing infrastructure is a challenge, the report notes. Meanwhile, the American Society of Civil Engineers’ grade for the country’s infrastructure has improved, from a D+ in 2017 to a C in 2025. Now even private credit firms are circling: As reported in Bloomberg, Apollo Global Management estimates that a boom in infrastructure deals help could grow the private debt market up to a staggering $40 trillion.   Independent urban designer Marc Wouters has an idea on how to fix BQE’s cantilever. He’s been working on it for years. “My process is that I always interview people in the community before I do any drawings,” he says. “So I really have listened to pretty much everybody over the past few years.” Unsolicited and developed in his own spare time, Wouters has designed an alternative for the triple cantilever that he named the BQE Streamline Plan. BQE Streamline Plan [Image: courtesy Marc Wouters | Studios/©2025] His concept, based on decades of experience in urban planning, infrastructure, and resilience projects in communities across the country, is relatively simple: extend the width of the two traffic-bearing cantilevers and add support beams to their outside edge, move both directions of traffic onto four lanes on the first level, and turn the second level into a large freeway cap park. Instead of major rebuilding efforts, Wouters’s proposal is more of a reinforcement and expansion, with a High Line-style park plopped on top. Though he’s not an engineer, Wouters is confident that his design would shift enough strain off the existing structure to allow it to continue functioning for the foreseeable future. (What actual engineers think remains to be seen.) “What I’ve done is come up with a plan that happens to be much less invasive, faster to build, a lot cheaper, and it encompasses a lot of what the community wants,” he says. “Yet it still handles the same capacity as the highway does right now.” So what will it take for this outsider’s idea to be considered a viable design alternative? This idea had been brewing in his mind for years. Wouters, who lives near the triple cantilever section of the BQE in Brooklyn Heights, has followed the highway’s planning process for more than a decade.  As complex infrastructure projects go, this one is particularly convoluted. The BQE is overseen by both the state of New York and New York City, among others, with the city in charge of the 1.5-mile section that includes the triple cantilever. This dual ownership has complicated the management of the highway and its funding. The city and the state have launched several efforts over the years to reimagine the highway’s entire length. In winter 2018, the city’s Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) released two proposals to address the ailing cantilever. Not seeing what they wanted from either one, Brooklyn Heights Association, a nonprofit neighborhood group, retained Wouters and his studio to develop an alternative design. He suggested building a temporary parallel bypass that would allow a full closure and repair of the triple cantilever. That proposal, along with competing ideas developed under the previous mayoral administration, went by the wayside in 2022, when the latest BQE redesign process commenced. Wouters found himself following yet another community feedback and planning process for the triple cantilever. The ideas being proposed by the city’s DOT this time around included a plan that would chew into the hillside that currently supports the triple cantilever to move the first tier of traffic directly underneath the second, and add a large girding structure on its open end to hold it all up. Other options included reshaping the retaining wall that currently holds up the triple cantilever, moving traffic below grade into a wide tunnel, or tearing the whole thing down and rebuilding from scratch. Each would be time-consuming and disruptive, and many of them cut into another well-loved public space immediately adjacent to the triple cantilever, Brooklyn Bridge Park. None of these options has anything close to unanimous support. And any of them will cost more than $1 billion—a price tag that hits much harder after the Federal Highway Administration rejected an $800 million grant proposal for fixing the BQE back in early 2024. BQE Streamline Plan [Image: courtesy Marc Wouters | Studios/©2025] Wouters is no highway zealot. In fact, he’s worked on a project heading into construction in Syracuse that will replace an underutilized inner-city highway with a more appropriately sized boulevard and developable land. But he felt sure there was a better way forward—a concept that would work as well in practice as on paper. “I just kept going to meetings and waiting to see what I thought was a progressive solution,” Wouters says. Unimpressed and frustrated, he set out to design it himself. Wouters released the Streamline Plan in March. The concept quickly gathered interest, receiving a flurry of local news coverage. He has since met with various elected officials to discuss it. But as elegant as Wouters’s concept may be, some stakeholders remain unconvinced that the city should be going all in on a reinterpretation of the triple cantilever. What might be more appropriate, critics say, is to make necessary fixes now to keep the triple cantilever safe and functional, and to spend more time thinking about whether this section of highway is even what the city needs in the long term. A group of local organizations is calling for a more comprehensive reconsideration of the BQE under the premise that its harms may be outnumbering its benefits. Launched last spring, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway Environmental Justice Coalition wants any planning for the future of the BQE to include efforts to address its health and environmental impacts on neighboring communities and to seek an alternative that reconnects communities that have been divided by the corridor. One member of this coalition is the Riders Alliance, a nonprofit focused on improving public transit in New York. Danny Pearlstein, the group’s policy and communications director, says implementing a major redesign of the triple cantilever would just reinforce car dependency in a place that’s actually well served by public transit. The environmental justice coalition’s worry is that rebuilding this one section in a long-term fashion could make it harder for change across the length of the entire BQE and could increase the environmental impact the highway has on the communities that surround it. “This is not just one neighborhood. This is communities up and down the corridor that don’t resemble each other very much in income or background who are united and are standing together for something that’s transformative, rather than doubling down on the old ways,” Pearlstein says. [Photo: ©NYC DOT] Lara Birnback is executive director of the Brooklyn Heights Association, representing a neighborhood of roughly 20,000 people. Her organization, which worked directly with Wouters in the past, is circumspect about his latest concept. “It’s certainly more interesting and responsive to the kinds of things that the community has been asking for when thinking about the BQE. It’s more of those things than we’ve seen from any of the designs that New York City DOT has presented to us through their engagement process,” she says. “But at the end of the day, it’s still a way of preserving more or less the status quo of the BQE as a major interstate highway running through the borough.” She argues it makes more sense to patch up the triple cantilever and use the extra years of service that buys to do a more radical rethinking of the BQE’s future. (For example, one 2020 proposal by the Brooklyn-based architecture studio Light and Air proposed a simple intervention of installing buttresses on the open-air side of the triple cantilever, propping it up with a relatively small addition of material.) “We really strongly encourage the city to move forward immediately with a more short-term stabilization plan for the cantilever, with repairs that would last, for example, 20 to 25 years rather than spending billions and billions of dollars rebuilding it for the next 100 years,” Birnback says. Birnback says a major rebuilding plan like the one Wouters is proposing—for all its community benefits—could end up doing more harm to the city. “I think going forward now with a plan that both embeds the status quo and most likely forecloses on the possibility of real transformation across the corridor is a mistake,” she says. NYC DOT expects to begin its formal environmental review process this year, laying the necessary groundwork for deciding on a plan for what to do with the triple cantilever, either for the short term or the long term. The environmental process will evaluate all concepts equally, according to DOT spokesperson Vincent Barone, who notes that the department is required to review and respond to all feedback that comes in through that process. There is technically nothing holding back Wouters’s proposal from being one of the alternatives considered. And he may have some important political support to help make that happen. Earlier this month, Brooklyn’s Community District 2 board formally supported the plan. They are calling for the city’s transportation department to include it in the BQE’s formal environmental review process when it starts later this year. [Photo: Sinisa Kukic/Getty Images] Wouters argues that his proposal solves the pressing structural problems of the triple cantilever while also opening resources to deal with the highway’s big picture challenges. “The several hundred million dollars of savings is now funding that could go to other parts of the BQE. And there are other parts that are really struggling,” he says. “I’m always thinking about the whole length and about all these other communities, not just this one.” With a new presidential administration and a mayoral primary election in June, what happens with the triple cantilever is very much up in the air. But if the environmental review process begins as planned this year, it only makes sense for every option to fall under consideration. What gets built—or torn down, or reconstructed, or reinterpreted—could reshape part of New York City for generations.

OK, I know you just read that headline, but let me admit first off that I don’t actually think Elden Ring is that hard — not if you take it slow and steady, which the game’s design not only allows but encourages. At every step of the way in Elden Ring, you can decide exactly how you want to play it. It’s very customizable and it rewards patience. Elden Ring Nightreign is the complete opposite, and that’s why I don’t think it’s for me. And it might not be for most other FromSoftware game fans, either, which is pretty shocking.It wouldn’t be a FromSoftware game launch without at least a few debates about difficulty and certain players hurling “git gud” at each other like it was ever even remotely cool to say that and not just performatively tryhard at best and antisocial at worst. I try to exist instead in the sector of the FromSoftware fandom that is prosocial rather than antisocial — think Let Me Solo Her, for example, or even consider the real-life story that inspired longtime FromSoftware game director Hidetaka Miyazaki to design Demon’s Souls’ multiplayer elements with prosocial thinking in mind (via an old 2010 Eurogamer interview):“The origin of that idea is actually due to a personal experience where a car suddenly stopped on a hillside after some heavy snow and started to slip,” says Miyazaki. “The car following me also got stuck, and then the one behind it spontaneously bumped into it and started pushing it up the hill... That’s it! That’s how everyone can get home! Then it was my turn and everyone started pushing my car up the hill, and I managed to get home safely.”“But I couldn’t stop the car to say thanks to the people who gave me a shove. I’d have just got stuck again if I’d stopped. On the way back home I wondered whether the last person in the line had made it home, and thought that I would probably never meet the people who had helped me. I thought that maybe if we’d met in another place we’d become friends, or maybe we’d just fight...””You could probably call it a connection of mutual assistance between transient people. Oddly, that incident will probably linger in my heart for a long time.”The multiplayer experiences that I’ve had in Dark Souls and Elden Ring definitely do linger in my heart. I’ve also absolutely loved the moments in FromSoftware games in which I’ve personally conquered a difficult section all by myself. But I look back with equal appreciation on the times when I summoned a complete stranger to help me with something — “a connection of mutual assistance between transient people,” as Miyazaki put it. It is how these games are meant to be played, not as brutal solo journeys but as shared experiences.Here’s a screenshot I took of my Elden Ring character at the beginning of the game, before I knew I was going to spend 360 hours playing it Image: FromSoftware via PolygonThis brings us back to Elden Ring Nightreign, a game not directed by Miyazaki but by Junya Ishizaki. The difference in its multiplayer ethos is stark. This is a game designed with three-player squads in mind; it’s currently very punishing for solo players (although an upcoming patch aims to fix some of that), and the designers are still working on a duos mode. Because it’s three-player by default, I assumed that the game would be designed around teamwork and would actively reward prosocial behaviors, like base Elden Ring. I would argue that it’s not, and that’s why it’s very hard to have a good time in the game — especially if you’re playing with complete strangers.Problem number one: There’s no in-game communication system besides pinging certain locations on the map. Lack of chat options is a FromSoftware classic, and in most of these games, you don’t really need communication to understand what to do. Usually, you’re just summoned to help with a boss battle, and after it’s over, you’re done and you go back to your game. But in Nightreign, it’s three-player for the entire game, obviously, and it’s a match-based game, not a hundreds-of-hours RPG. Matches last 45 minutes and every second counts, which means you and your teammates need to be extremely organized throughout. The lack of communication hurts. But that’s not the only problem. Far from it.Problem number two: The ring of fire. This game is a combination of Elden Ring’s open world areas (which encourage slow, methodical exploration) and a Fortnite-esque ring of fire that closes in on you constantly (which means you absolutely shouldn’t be doing any slow, methodical exploration). There’s also a Diablo-esque loot system, but you better read those loot descriptions fast, because the fire is coming for you. There are randomized boss fights all over the map, but oops, you might not be able to complete them in time to collect runes from them, because that fire is closing in. There are also special upgrades that you can only get if you defeat these mid-game bosses all over the map, but you might barely even have time to read those descriptions of the special abilities and select one in time for… you guessed it… the fire rushing towards you.This second problem becomes even more stressful when you have two other people on your team alongside you. This game has not one but two different sprint buttons in it — a regular sprint, and a super-fast sprint that uses up stamina faster. That’s because, of course, you need to be running from that fire. But that means your teammates, and you, need to constantly be doing the equivalent of screaming “move, move, move” like a drill sergeant in an army movie. You will be unwittingly getting annoyed at your teammate who is spending too damn long looking at loot on the ground or at an upgrade tree. The fire is coming! Hurry the fuck up! Again, this is not a game design choice that rewards prosocial behaviors and instead makes you feel dragged down by the two teammates that you also desperately need to survive the bosses in this game. Even the “revive” process involves you inflicting damage on your teammate to bring them back to life (rather than a revive button or item), which is darkly hilarious, because you might also grow to desire hitting them due to how annoyed you might feel that they died during a super difficult fight. Which brings us to the third and final problem.Image: FromSoftwareThird problem: The randomization of the bosses and of the items. The thing about base Elden Ring is that you can figure out a boss and how it works (is it weak to fire? Holy damage? And so on) and then patiently build up a character who can deal with that problem. You can memorize that boss’ attack patterns. You can find a save point nearest to that boss and run it back over and over again until you get past it. These are all of the wonderful and rewarding parts of playing FromSoftware video games; these are also the moments when you might do all of those preparations and then think, “Actually, I want to also summon a complete stranger to help me with this boss because it’s still too freaking hard.” And then you can do that, too. None of that is the case in Nightreign, because everything is completely fucking random.The bosses, except for the very last boss in each area, are random. The loot is random. Do you have the right loot to fight the boss you’re facing right this second? You may very well not. Do your teammates have it? You might not even know; you don’t have a way to communicate with them, after all. Is the boss in this area way overleveled for you and your team? It won’t be obvious until you start hitting it, and once you do that, good luck escaping. And if your team does a complete wipe and everyone dies to that boss together, you don’t get to run back together from the nearest save point, having seen its attack patterns, ready to try again with teamwork in mind. Nope, instead you get to start all over again, except now with new randomized bosses and new randomized loot.In other games with randomized loot, like Diablo, or other roguelikes with random elements like Hades, the game is designed with down time in mind. When you’ve completed a fight in Diablo or Hades, you have infinite time to stand around and make decisions. There is no encroaching circle of fire forcing you to read item descriptions and ability trees quickly. There’s a reason for that; the decision-making is the most fun part of a game with randomized elements. Why would Nightreign take that away?All of these aspects of the game do feel less bad if you’re playing with two good friends on voice chat. But even in that scenario, the game is still really punishing, and again, not in a way that other FromSoftware games are punishing. It’s punishing because you need to spend the entire game running, looking at randomized loot as fast as you possibly can before making a snap (possibly bad) decision, running more, desperately encouraging your teammates to keep on running to keep up, warning your teammates about the encroaching flames about to kill them, and did I mention running? Is this a fun way to spend your weekly gamer night with two other adults who just worked a full-time job all day and maybe just wanted to have a nice time playing a video game together?Image: FromSoftware/Bandai NamcoI’ve had a review code for Nightreign for a while now, so I already was worried about these problems before the game launched, but now that it’s launched and I’m seeing early mixed reviews on Steam, I’m ready to commiserate and validate: Yes, this game really doesn’t feel like Elden Ring, and even after some of this stuff gets patched, it’s still fundamentally super different. And that’s not only because it’s multiplayer, but because the multiplayer just doesn’t feel like other multiplayer FromSoftware experiences. It feels like it’s designed not only for people who have two best friends with whom they play competitive games on a regular basis, but also specifically for people who live for thrills and speed — not the methodical, calculated experiences of other FromSoftware games.For all of those reasons, I’m really not sure how this is going to go for FromSoftware over time. Is this game going to eventually encourage some prosocial behaviors amongst players, against all odds? Will people slowly learn the best ways to get through different areas? Will there be a “meta” for working together that emerges over time?It seems possible, and since it’s only been one day, it’s way too early to tell. Various social norms will emerge in the player community, and hopefully they won’t be toxic ones. But I can tell from having already played the game that this is going to be an uphill climb for FromSoftware fans. It’s a very different game — and its specific form of difficulty is going to be a whole new variety for those fans to get used to. And like me, they might just decide they don’t really care for it.See More:

When George R.R. Martin crafted the world of Westeros back in the 90s, he probably didn’t think his words would go on to spawn graphic novels, TV shows, action figures, video games, and more. Moreover, I doubt the author expected his works to be adapted into a mobile-friendly action-RPG built to prioritize predatory microtransactions over the rich lore he’d spent decades perfecting. Yet in 2025, we have Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, a visually striking open-world exploration game that looks compelling in motion, but hones in more on menus and currency than fantasy adventure. And, as you push deeper into its sizable campaign to uncover a plethora of in-game currencies and progress-halting hurdles, the neo-medieval jaunt starts to feel more like a lesson in asset management than a thoughtful RPG. Kingsroad takes place during season four of the HBO TV series, putting you in the fur-lined boots of a northern-born bastard of House Tyre. With your father sickly and your inheritance caught up in the strict succession rules of the realm, the only hope for the safety of your people is to borrow, beg, and steal your way into the hearts of the lords and ladies of Westeros. Naturally, things aren’t as simple as just asking, and you’ll have to go round the houses (literally) to solve land disputes, find missing soldiers, and knock together the heads of vassal-house warriors on your way to earning your flowers. Alongside a cavalcade of curious NPCs, there are also White Walkers, mythical beasts, and traitorous Boltons to butt heads with. Thankfully, Westeros’ misfortune makes for an enticing landing pad for you to start from. PlayBefore you dive into the cobbled streets and open roads of Westeros, though, you’ll first need to pick a combat archetype to play as: a brutish Sellsword, a skilful Knight, or a nimble Assassin. Fuelled by my love of Brienne of Tarth and Dungeons & Dragons’ Barbarian class, I opted for the axe-wielding Sellsword, whose heavy strikes can easily wind gaggles of enemy forces. Indecisive? Good news: Kingsroad does allow you to switch between archetypes at any time, and your inventory is shared across your three possible characters, so you can boost your alts with your main’s hard-earned loot. That said, I was disappointed to find that once you finalise a character, you can’t delete them and start that class over, or change their name, a feature that bit me in the butt when testing how unsightly I could make my Knight. With your combat destiny chosen, Kingsroad’s decently impressive character creator lets you use a mixture of face-contorting sliders and colour-pickers to specialise your plucky hero. It doesn’t have the depth of something like Dragon’s Dogma 2 (although that’s an admittedly high bar), but I am glad I was able to bestow my characters with an identity that felt personal to me – which is to say moody, and tastefully adorned with smudgy eyeliner and edgy facial scars. You'll explore an impressively recreated map of Westeros.“Kingsroad wastes no time teaching you the basics of its combat and platforming with a tight but comprehensive tutorial, which takes you beyond the wall and back again. That’s where you’ll meet the first of many familiar faces for any fans of the show, as Jon Snow and Samwell Tarley do a decent job of filling in the narrative gaps for those in need of a season four recap. While the digital renditions of these well-known characters aren’t the most flattering, their conversations felt thoughtfully written and helped to establish my lowborn place within the setting. Soon enough, though, Kingsroad lets go of your hand and allows you to roam free across the countryside, providing a choice of campaign quests and side missions to follow, as well as plenty of points of interest to chase on your map. The open world of Kingsroad gave me the freedom to explore this (mostly) faithfully reimagined Westeros, and I enjoyed riding across snowy plateaus and uncovering the secrets of curious stone architecture nestled on the horizon. But the initial exhilaration of high fantasy galavanting wore off quickly as the edges of developer Netmarble’s fantasy panopticon started to show. For every delicate snowflake at Castle Black or butterfly dancing in Winterfell, there were plenty more low-poly fruit trees, bouncy grass patches, and possessed weapons to pick at the sheen. I admire the sheer scale of the open world Kingsroad is offering, but it’s lacking the visual consistency to make it realistic and immersive. As I soon noticed those cracks in the facade, Kingsroad started to feel like a game full of pulled punches, despite how promising it seemed at a distance.This lack of polish extends to your movement on both foot and horseback – ice skating would be the most fitting comparison. When exploring the frosty reaches of the North, this sensation is strangely fitting. However, it became wholly frustrating when it persisted while charting the sunny coastal areas near Highgarden, especially when attempting to complete the occasional platforming puzzles dotted around the icon-covered map. Typically, I was only one slip away from falling down an unscalable hillside, or worse, into a camp of fierce opponents with no way out. Up close, the animations also err on the eerie side in cutscenes. My character would often deliver a wide-eyed death stare, and I couldn't take them seriously as they’d burn holes in the townsfolk’s skulls as they explained their heart wrenching tragedies.Memorable characters surface as uncanny valley clones of themselves.“Speaking of the citizens of Westeros, their heads and eyes wobble around like strange marionettes during conversations, which dampens the atmosphere considerably. It’s a shame, because their dialogue does a great job of affirming the grim, corrupt cloud that hangs over the continent as winter approaches. I felt particularly bad laughing when an old lady thanked me for saving her daughter from being eaten by Ramsay Bolton’s dogs. Unfortunately, the most egregious offenders are often Kingsroad’s recreations of characters from the show. Memorable players, like Nymeria Sand and Varys, surface as uncanny valley clones of their likenesses. I’ll be seeing yassifed Cersei in my nightmares for many moons to come…Beyond exploration, the bulk of your time in Kingsroad is split between investing in complex resource management systems at your homestead and completing multi-stage quests and battles out in the world. As such, you can find a plethora of challenges that boost both of these areas, like dungeon crawls, bandit camps, occupied villages, and giant mythical beasts, all of which reward you handsomely for spilling blood by the gallon. How efficiently you blend your time between these two aspects is integral to maintaining a solid pace within the grind-heavy progression system – alas, a lack of technical balance makes succeeding in this endeavour profoundly painful.Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Gameplay ScreenshotsThe trouble begins with the combat, which is a total mixed bag. While your actions feel pleasantly grounded, and rugged blows always arrive with flashy particle-heavy animations, the process begins to feel overfamiliar fast. Despite the solid variety of moves available – light, heavy, and special attacks, as well as decent dodge and parry options – inaccurate hit boxes consistently hampered my attempts at strategy. Occasionally, I would need to use my head a little and skulk around an area to remove edge threats, though those tactical moments arrived few and far between. It says something unflattering that Kingsroad feels almost identical at 60 hours as it did at 20. You can specialise and upgrade your moveset in combat with traits and skill trees, too, but they do little to impact how the combat feels in motion. Kingsroad gives the impression of having useful Traits by putting options like learning to parry and crafting arrows up at the top of the trees, but as you work your way down, many of the lower options offer small percentage-based improvements to defense and attack that barely make a dent. So as your sparkly slashes lose their lustre, you’re often left cycling through the same few enemies and combos until the battle is won. It seems as though the architecture of a solid combat system is there, but much like the rest of Kingsroad, it’s all facade with no foundation. What hampers the fun most are the frequent and appropriately-named Momentum roadblocks.“Still, what hampers the fun of Kingsroad most of all are the frequently appearing and appropriately-named Momentum roadblocks. Similar to Destiny’s Gear Score, Kingsroad tallies up the quality of all your equipment, accessories, and skills into one neat number called your Momentum Score. These pesky little digits are the cruel gatekeepers of story content, forcing you to scour the map for dull side objectives that can juice the numbers and shuffle you towards the next episode. While I’m more than happy to invest in grind-heavy games like World of Warcraft Classic and no stranger to mobile-minded progress gating, the Momentum system in Kingsroad is a particularly brutish arbiter that doesn’t allow you to get crafty or punch above your weight by taking on more challenging enemies. Instead, imposing forces appear with a skull icon over their head, their damage and health ratings untouchably high. But as soon as you inch over the Momentum line, the fight shifts dramatically in your favour. This black and white process neutralises any sense of gamesmanship, and frequently forced me into hours of toil to get back to the story I was, for the most part, enjoying. Sarah's favourite fantasy jauntsSee AllWhen you’re ready to take some time out from the combat, you can invest more in the slower-paced aspects of Kingsroad, namely the tedious Estate Management side game. As the last remaining heir to Lord Tyre, his homestead, Renan’s Rest, becomes your project. As is to be expected, helping this dilapidated village flourish rewards you with the tools necessary to beef up your arsenal, and gives you a place to spend all those resources you’ve been hoarding by completing missions – though the process of cleaning up this town is about as much fun as cleaning your actual room.While the jeweller and the forge are convenient additions that allow you to craft wearable items, the most valuable activity is embarking on gacha-based Artefact Expeditions. You’ll spend resources to hire workers and send them into the wild to find more resources, as well as historical items called Relics you can then leverage to further bolster your Momentum. Similar to other gacha game systems, you’re guaranteed a high-quality item after a set amount of runs, but a standard expedition takes eight actual hours to complete, which is a frustrating turnaround when not every run guarantees a good haul. That is, unless you’re willing to pay real money to speed things up. The Story Continues - Live Service UpdatesPlayWhile it took me roughly 60 hours to complete the story missions that were available at Game of Thrones: Kingsroad’s 1.0 launch (in part thanks to the benefit of the Ultimate Founder’s Pack code we were provided for this review), once you finish up, it doesn’t really “end” and you can seek out the plethora of side quests and repeatable combat challenges across the map. While there isn’t an official roadmap for what’s on the horizon, Netmarble announced during its 1.0 release Dev Note that the team will continue to add content and make technical improvements as time goes on. Alongside the Battle Pass, there are also timed Events that offer additional goalposts and ask you to complete a series of challenges to earn further rewards. Continued support is always good, and here’s hoping things like the floaty movement and inconsistent animations might eventually get the polish they need, but I’m skeptical that much can be done to fix Kingsroad’s biggest issues without a complete rework of its economy and progression. For example, the new quests that were already added post-launch should’ve been enticing, but instead they pushed the finish line absurdly far out of sight – by my rough estimate, I would need to play more than twice what I already have just to reach the Momentum Score required to take them on (without spending any money), and that’s despite the fact that this new content seems to follow the exact same loop of mission types already used across the rest of the campaign. Thanks, but I’m good.That brings us to the elephant in the room. Almost every activity in Kingsroad can be expedited with the use of cold hard cash, which translates to Iron Bank Marks in-game. Of course, you can pay to complete an aforementioned expedition early, or buy higher-rarity expedition wagons by the dozen that don’t take time to complete. Stuck behind a Momentum block? Just purchase Gold to speedrun your jewellery maker’s upgrades and smelt higher-rated necklaces and rings to jolt your score. Typically, you can only fast travel by making your way to a special signpost first, and there’s a copper fee for each warp – but you can fast travel from anywhere for free if you pay for the premium option. Behind nearly every aggravating system in Kingsroad is a far more user-friendly one, but only if you’re willing to cough up the dough. It seems intent to toe the line between being intentionally frustrating and passably functional, subtly egging you on to pay up rather than sit through the repetitive, time-consuming activities necessary to proceed. While it’s to be expected that there will be premium aspects in a free-to-play game available on mobile devices (in addition to Steam), the overwhelming flood of paid subscriptions, resource packs, and confounding currencies feels like a heartbreaking affront to Game of Thrones fans, like myself, who have been begging for a fully-fledged Westeros RPG similar to this. Across the 60 hours I’ve played so far, I’ve felt guilty for slashing down innocent defectors and filled with joy for feeding the starving smallfolk. It's clear Netmarble wants you to feel like you’re making a difference in this world, but it’s also just as keen to remind you that you can make a difference quicker if you’re willing to enter your credit card details first. It’s sad to see so much effort put into the underlying concept of a Game of Thrones adventure like this only for it to be tarnished by microtransactions and the repetitive gameplay loops that enable them.

Flovik House / Fabian Tan ArchitectSave this picture!© BricksbeginHouses•Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Architects: Fabian Tan Architect Area Area of this architecture project Area:  4000 ft² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2024 Photographs Photographs:Bricksbegin Lead Architects: Fabian Tan More SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! Text description provided by the architects. Flovik House, nestled in a quiet Kuala Lumpur hillside, is a two-storey bungalow on a 6,800 square foot plot with a 4,000 square foot built-up area. The house has been fully transformed while maintaining the original split level of approximately 1.5 meters.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Upon entering the foyer, the lower ground's former living area is now converted into an enclosed study room. Moving up to the upper ground floor, the rear portion was rebuilt to create a spacious double-volume living and dining area that opens to a serene koi pond. Perched above this is an elevated planter and rock garden with a coping that conceals a waterfall transitioning into seating at the open deck, which connects to the spacious kitchen with a marble-top island and warm timber cabinets.Save this picture!The living area flows into a bar lounge, utilizing the home's unique angles to form openings along mid-landings. This space connects to a grand, high-ceiling front deck for lounging, accessible directly via an external staircase. Structural columns integrate into seating, maintaining proportion while overlooking the expansive front garden.Save this picture!A key feature of the house is a two-panel pivoting wall above the sliding doors, appearing as a static architectural element but offering four dynamic configurations that adjust light, ventilation, and side views while maintaining privacy from the neighboring house.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Ascending the staircase, the master suite comprises a bedroom, a walk-in wardrobe, and a large bathroom with a bathtub. The upper first floor features a family room overlooking the double-height living spaces and open deck. A corridor leads to two additional en suite bedrooms. At the rooftop level, the home opens to panoramic views of the neighborhood greenery and glimpses of the city skyline. The essential idea is to seamlessly blend the new and old through interconnected spaces and cross-linked openness to the surrounding gardens and beyond.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less About this officeFabian Tan ArchitectOffice••• MaterialConcreteMaterials and TagsPublished on May 19, 2025Cite: "Flovik House / Fabian Tan Architect" 19 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1030166/flovik-house-fabian-tan-architect&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Hundertwasser’s home in the Kaurinui Valley, located just 20 minutes north of Kawakawa and less than a three-hour drive from Auckland, is to be the only one of his homes around the world that is open to the public. I was given a tour by volunteers from Living Hundertwasser, including Richard Smart, who worked closely with Hundertwasser for eight years and now represents the non-profit Hundertwasser Foundation in New Zealand. Born Friedrich Stowasser in Austria in 1928, Hundertwasser was a world-famous painter and architect, renowned for his radical views and eccentric approach to design. His childhood, marked by the devastations of World War II, led him to find solace in painting alternative worlds filled with nature, vibrant colours and abstract forms that would later influence the trajectory of his environmentalism and architecture.1 The Eyeslit, Kaurinui, 2025.© Image:  Richard Smart In 1976, he settled in New Zealand, purchasing a dairy farm in the Kaurinui Valley with the intention of setting nature free.2 He did just that: over two decades planting 150,000 trees and widening the Kaurinui Stream that flows through the farm. His philosophy is embodied in every aspect of the property and, despite recent health-and-safety upgrades, Hundertwasser’s dwellings remain as he left them, down to his last shopping list and paintbrushes left on the table. The tour begins at the Eyeslit, a Hundertwasser design built after his death, replacing the old decaying farmhouse. Aligned with his distinctive style, it features vibrant pink walls, colourful mosaics and columns reminiscent of his iconic Kawakawa toilets. The Eyeslit serves as a communal space for a pre-tour introduction to Hundertwasser and his legacy that lives on in Kaurinui. The Bottlehaus, Kaurinui.©  Image:  Richard Smart The tour continues through four of his six idiosyncratic dwellings scattered throughout the property, each reflecting his ecological philosophies. The next stop is The Boatshed, a gabled timber building, home to his boat, La Giudecca. Across a bridge over the Kaurinui Stream is The Cave, a space dug into the hillside, containing a bench and hundreds of wētā. Returning over the stream, we arrive at The Pigsty, Hundertwasser’s primary dwelling, which, true to its name, is a former pigsty converted into a habitable space. Inside, a hallway stretches the length of the home, with the kitchen, dining and living room, and a combined bedroom and bathroom branching off. It is built from recycled glass bottles and natural materials, such as earth bricks and logs laid on their sides, extending from inside to outside, mortared in place with a lime, cement and sawdust mixture. With its spontaneously vegetated green roof, felled tree trunk columns and uneven interior floors, the dwelling echoes his philosophy that buildings, like human skin, should grow and wrinkle over time, evolving alongside nature.3 Mountain Hut, Kaurinui, 1994/95.©  Image:  Richard Smart The Bottlehaus, originally the farm’s milking shed, is Hundertwasser’s other main residence. The interior is filled with natural light from the polycarbonate skylight and bottle walls, providing perfect conditions for painting. Not yet included in the tour because of their distance are the Railway Hut and Mountain Hut. Smart recounts how he and his children would hike up to the Mountain Hut, spending the night in the home, built three-quarters underground. The walls and floor are clay earth and the roof, covered in wild greenery, sits just above the ground’s surface. Hundertwasser’s alignment with Māori culture is reflected throughout his homes; adorning the walls are timber-carved tiki and the koru flag he designed for New Zealand, symbolising a unified national identity. Hundertwasser was inherently nomadic, moving between buildings based on their various functions, inadvertently resembling the organisation of customary Māori papakāinga settlements, where buildings serve distinct purposes. Māori would move between kāinga seasonally, leaving structures built from natural materials to decay and return to the earth. At the tour’s final stop, the Exhibition Building, a letter from Hundertwasser’s friend A. D. Fagan in 1974 describes him as a guardian of the land, a sentiment akin to Māori identification as kaitiaki – guardians of the whenua. Before his death, Hundertwasser expressed his desire for Māori artists to have equal opportunities in New Zealand. This wish was realised in the Whangārei Hundertwasser Art Centre and Wairau Māori Art Gallery, completed in 2022.4 Throughout the property, Hundertwasser’s interventions – from a waterwheel and outdoor bath to timber plank bridges and ladders feeding into ponds – speak to a lifestyle that reinforces his commitment to living in harmony with nature. In contrast to his bold European architecture, Hundertwasser’s New Zealand home is more subdued and organic, blending seamlessly into the forest, indistinguishable from the natural environment. As Living Hundertwasser volunteer Clive Jackson explains, “He wanted to let the colours of nature speak.” He allowed nature to exist in its most wild and natural state, supporting his 1983 Peace Treaty with Nature, where he asserted that humanity must put itself behind ecological barriers so the earth can regenerate.5 As an example, he considered trees to be fellow ‘tenants’ on the property, who ‘paid rent’ through their provision of oxygen, beauty and joy.6 Hundertwasser died in 2000 and, at his own request, was buried under a tulip tree at Kaurinui, his body returning to the earth to nourish the ‘tree tenant’. This final act encapsulates his lifelong philosophy of humanity in harmony with nature and, as such, he lives on through the property. Hundertwasser famously stated, “We are only guests of nature and must behave accordingly. Man is the most dangerous pest ever to devastate the earth.”7 In a world where modern architecture is disrupting the natural environment and climate, Kaurinui offers a blueprint for a return to ‘original nature’ – a more sustainable, symbiotic relationship with the earth, and one that resonates with our country’s indigenous identity and the role we must assume as kaitiaki, guardians, of the natural world. REFERENCES 1 Nir Barak, 2022, ‘Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928–2000)’, The Architectural Review, 18 October 2022. 2 Andreas J. Hirsch, 2022, ‘Hundertwasser’s “Five Skins” Unfold’, in Hundertwasser in New Zealand: The Art of Creating Paradise. Auckland: Oratia Books, p. 72. 3 Wieland Schmied, 2007, For a More Human Architecture in Harmony with Nature: Hundertwasser Architecture. Köln: Taschen, p. 259. 4 Cooperation Agreement 2016, p. 24. 5 Friedensreich Hundertwasser, 1983, Peace Treaty with Nature, Hundertwasser Foundation. hundertwasser.com/en/texts/friedensvertrag_mit_der_natur 6 Wieland Schmied, 2007, For a More Human Architecture in Harmony with Nature: Hundertwasser Architecture, p. 86. 7 Hundertwasser Foundation. 2016. Hundertwasser Architektur & Philosophie. Germany: Wörner Verlag GmbH, p. 30.

Lovell House | © Julius Shulman Few residential projects in the history of architecture have so concisely synthesized the aspirations of the modernist movement as the Lovell House. Designed by Richard Neutra and constructed between 1927 and 1929, this hillside residence overlooking Los Angeles is more than a stylistic landmark. It is a rigorous exploration of space, health, and industrial modernity. Commissioned by Dr. Philip Lovell, a health advocate and proponent of naturopathy, the house was conceived not as a retreat from the world but as a manifesto supporting rational living. For Neutra, who had recently arrived in the United States from Europe, this project represented a professional breakthrough and a profoundly personal alignment of ideological principles. Lovell House Technical Information Architects1-6: Richard Neutra Location: 4616 Dundee Drive, Los Feliz, Los Angeles, California, USA Area: 446 m2 | 4,800 Sq. Ft. Project Year: 1927 – 1928 Photographs: © Julius Shulman Philip Lovell wanted a house that would express his ideas of health, hygiene, and fitness. I wanted a house that would express my ideas of modern architecture. In the end, we built both. – Richard Neutra 7 Lovell House Photographs © Michael Locke, Flickr User © Michael Locke, Flickr User © Barcelo Photography © Barcelo Photography © Barcelo Photography © Barcelo Photography © Julius Shulman © Julius Shulman © Julius Shulman © Julius Shulman © Julius Shulman © Julius Shulman Context and Commission The interwar period witnessed a radical reevaluation of domestic space, partly driven by technological advancements and shifting attitudes toward hygiene and well-being. Within this cultural milieu, Dr. Lovell, already known for commissioning the Lovell Beach House by Rudolf Schindler, sought to build a residence that would embody his beliefs in clean living, sun exposure, and fresh air. His choice of Neutra, an architect trained in Vienna and influenced by figures such as Adolf Loos and Erich Mendelsohn, signaled a deliberate move toward a more European, functionalist approach. The Lovell House was Neutra’s first major commission in the United States and his opportunity to engage with the burgeoning discourse around the International Style. Lovell’s trust in Neutra and the architect’s commitment to creating a scientifically ordered environment set the stage for one of the most iconic modern homes in American architecture. Design Strategies and Construction Innovation On the hills of Los Feliz, the Lovell House is among the earliest examples of residential steel-frame construction in the United States. Neutra’s use of this system, more commonly associated with commercial or industrial buildings then, allowed for a remarkably lightweight structure that could seemingly float above its steep site. The steel frame also permitted large spans and cantilevers, freeing the plan from traditional load-bearing constraints and enabling expansive glazed openings. The house is organized as a vertical sequence of spaces, with each floor serving a distinct function. The lower level includes areas for exercise and recreation, aligned with Lovell’s ideals, while the upper floors house living and sleeping quarters. Circulation is carefully orchestrated, with a suspended exterior stair emphasizing the connection between levels without interrupting the building’s formal clarity. Transparency and openness are guiding principles throughout the design. Ribbon windows, floor-to-ceiling glazing, and open terraces blur the boundary between inside and out, capitalizing on Southern California’s climate while reinforcing Neutra’s belief in architecture’s capacity to mediate between human beings and their environment. Materiality and Environmental Integration The Lovell House’s material language is deliberately spare. Industrial steel, concrete, glass, and stucco are deployed precisely, rejecting ornamentation in favor of surface, proportion, and rhythm. Neutra’s choice of materials was aesthetic and deeply aligned with the project’s hygienic ethos: smooth, cleanable surfaces, built-in furniture, and controlled daylight contribute to a sense of physical and psychological well-being. Despite its machine-like clarity, the house is far from alienated from its context. The steeply sloping terrain becomes an active component of the design. Outdoor terraces, bridges, and gardens mediate between the constructed and natural environments, encouraging movement, exposure to sunlight, and engagement with the landscape. Neutra’s sensitivity to site and orientation ensured that the building was not merely placed on the land but woven into its topography and climate. Legacy and Influence The Lovell House has long occupied a pivotal place in the architectural canon. Featured in the 1932 Museum of Modern Art exhibition that introduced the International Style to an American audience, it exemplified the movement’s nationalist ideals in built form. Its influence on subsequent generations of architects in the U.S. and abroad cannot be overstated. For Neutra, the project marked the beginning of a prolific career dedicated to what he termed “biorealism”: integrating architecture with its inhabitants’ physiological and psychological needs. The house’s emphasis on health, efficiency, and environmental responsiveness would become hallmarks of his later work. Lovell House Plans Sketches | © Richard Neutra Floor Plans | © Richard Neutra Elevations | © Richard Neutra Elevations | © Richard Neutra Isometric View | © Richard Neutra Lovell House Image Gallery About Richard Neutra Richard Neutra (1892–1970) was an Austrian-American architect whose work played a pivotal role in defining the architectural identity of mid-20th century California. Deeply influenced by European modernism and trained under figures like Adolf Loos and briefly Frank Lloyd Wright, Neutra brought a rigorous, human-centered approach to design that emphasized clarity, health, and environmental responsiveness. His architecture fused technological precision with psychological and physiological considerations, resulting in dwellings that were as much about wellness as they were about aesthetics. Best known for projects like the Lovell House and the Kaufmann Desert House, Neutra’s legacy is a model of modern architecture’s potential to harmonize life, nature, and innovation. Credits and Additional Notes Client: Dr. Philip Lovell Design Period: 1927 Construction Period: 1928–1929 Site Conditions: Steep hillside lot in Los Feliz with expansive views over Los Angeles Construction System: Steel-frame structure with gunite (sprayed concrete) and stucco cladding Architectural Style: International Style / Modernism Neutra: Complete Works by Barbara Mac Lamprecht, Peter Gossel, Dion Neutra, Julius Shulman

It’s been less than a year since the world’s largest dam removal project was completed along 420 miles of the Klamath River, near the border of Oregon and California. But if you look at the river now, you might not know that four dams had ever been in place. Instead of concrete walls and artificial reservoirs, the river is now free-flowing—and parts of the former infrastructure have been replaced by wildflowers that are in bloom. Iron Gate Dam, circa 2023 [Photo: Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images] “It’s been an incredible transition,” says Ann Willis, California regional director at American Rivers, a nonprofit that supported Native American tribes in a decades-long fight to take out the dams. “It’s really strange and wonderful to stand on the bridge that goes across the Klamath River and look upstream where Iron Gate Dam used to be. I used to imagine a river above it, and now I see the river.” Construction crews remove the top of the cofferdam that was left of Iron Gate Dam, allowing the Klamath River to run in its original path for the first time in nearly a century near Hornbrook, California, in August 2024. [Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images] The dams were built between 1918 and 1962 to provide hydropower, and immediately blocked salmon from migrating. Over time, the ecosystem started to collapse. By 1997, coho salmon in the river were listed as endangered. (The river was once the third-largest salmon fishery in the continental U.S.) In 2002, when the federal government diverted water to farms instead of letting it flow downstream in the river, tens of thousands of salmon died. Local tribes like the Yurok—who have lived by the river for at least 10,000 years, and who consider salmon a central and sacred part of their culture—started the long fight to take out the dams. Beyond the direct impact on fish, the dams impacted the larger environment as the flow of nutrients down the river stopped. Willis compares dams to a blockage in human arteries that eventually lead to a heart attack. “When you put a dam in a river, there’s an entire living network of things that depends on the flow of the river—the patterns and relationship of the river and its flow with the land around it,” she says. “When you block it, you start this long process of decline. That’s the bad news. The good news is one of the fastest ways to resuscitate a river and its surrounding ecosystem is to simply remove the dam.”  Copco No. 1 prior to removal [Photo: Daniel Nylen/courtesy American Rivers] The advocacy was a challenge. But the tribes and environmental groups behind the campaign were helped by the fact that it was ultimately more expensive for the power company to keep the aging dams in place than to get rid of them. The power that the dams provided was also relatively easy to replace, since it made up only 2% of the utility’s power generation. (The utility’s overall plan to meet power needs includes more investment in renewable energy, more energy efficiency, and a small amount of natural gas.) In 2016, after years of negotiation, the power company transferred the dams to a nonprofit in charge of their removal. In 2022, the federal government greenlit the plan, which had a cost of around $450 million, funded both by California state bond money and by utility customers. From top: Before the removal of Copco No. 2, and after. [Photos: Shane Anderson/Swiftwater Films/courtesy American Rivers] The dams were taken out in phases, with the smallest removed in 2023 and the rest last year, all carefully timed to avoid disrupting fish that might try to swim through the area. First, the reservoirs were drained. Then demolition crews blew up larger concrete structures. Dump trucks cleared away rocks, dirt, and sand, returning some of the material to the hillsides it was carved out of decades ago. The former Copco reservoir site [Photo: Matt Mais/Yurok Tribe] Plans for restoring plant life started earlier. A crew of primarily Yurok tribe members began collecting seeds from native flowers and trees in 2019. Most of the seeds went to nurseries, where they were grown in fields to produce more flowers and even more seeds. “There were over 2,000 acres that needed revegetation,” says Joshua Chenoweth, an ecologist who worked with the Yurok tribe on the project. “Because it’s so large, you can’t collect enough seed to just throw it back on the landscape.” [Photo: Matt Mais/Yurok Tribe] The crew eventually spread billions of seeds using a variety of methods, from hand-planting to using a helicopter in areas where it was too dangerous to walk. Right now, the hills are covered in California poppies and a mix of other plants. “The hand-seeding exceeded my wildest expectations,” Chenoweth says. [Photo: Matt Mais/Yurok Tribe] The fish also came back faster than scientists expected. “The dam removal was officially complete on September 30,” says Willis. “The first salmon was detected swimming upstream into that ancestral habitat in three days, which was just shocking. Then, within a month, 6,000 salmon were detected swimming upstream. I don’t think anyone expected this quick of a response at this really large scale.”

Perched on a sun-drenched slope in Bend, Oregon, the Tetherow Overlook House by Hacker is a masterclass in architectural harmony with its environment. Designed as both a personal retreat and a cultural space, the 7,600-square-foot home merges bold form with a serene sense of place, drawing directly from the dramatic topography and textures of Central Oregon’s high desert. The structure unfolds along a sandy bluff, revealing itself through a series of staggered platforms that mirror the land’s natural contours. Rather than dominating its environment, the home gently embeds itself into the terrain, using angular concrete and carefully faceted walls to echo the jagged character of nearby volcanic formations. At the heart of the design are three primary volumes – each wrapped in a uniform skin of coarse wooden slats – that delineate the home’s core functions. These textured structures contain the garage and studio, sleeping quarters, and dining area. Their rhythm and placement offer a shifting spatial experience as one moves between enclosed interiors and open-air zones, where the landscape and sky feel at arm’s reach. Entry into the home begins at the site’s highest elevation, where the approach is marked by a courtyard and a dramatic steel pivot door tucked beneath a cantilevered bedroom wing. Inside, a subtle palette of materials – stone, wood, and metal – extends from room to room and blurs the boundary between interior and exterior. Every element has been chosen to reinforce the residence’s connection to its environment while maintaining a backdrop that complements the owners’ extensive collection of modern art. The exterior design is both rugged and refined. The weathered timber cladding, continuous across walls and windows, pays homage to the region’s fire-scarred forests and weather-beaten tree snags. Carved planes and chamfered edges lend the building a raw monumentality, reflecting the eroded yet resilient geology that surrounds it. To protect against the harsh desert sun and wind, varying types of shelter are factored into the design. The house’s internal organization plays with levels and layers, creating visual and physical flow through its varied floor heights. The living areas unfold in sequence: a lounge, kitchen, and sunken sitting room step down in concert with the hillside. The dining space, elevated slightly above the kitchen, occupies a separate box that projects outward like a lookout post, offering panoramic views of the desert beyond. Above, the top floor serves as a tranquil private domain, featuring a primary suite, guest accommodations, and a workspace, all arranged around a light-filled gallery that overlooks the social spaces below. A refined wooden screen flanks the staircase, providing a visual filter between zones while echoing the vertical exterior cladding. Descending further, a secluded lower level is embedded into the slope, offering a quiet haven for recreation and relaxation with its own entertainment zone and spa area. For more information on the Tetherow Overlook House or Hacker, visit hackerarchitects.com. Photography by Jeremy Bittermann.