US politics
fromThe Cipher Brief
3 hours agoThe Costly Illusion of the Golden Dome
The Golden Dome for America strategy focuses on affordable missile defense capabilities to counter current and future threats.
The entire building is organized around the game's visual logic. Its form references an unfolded chessboard, its facades use perforated solar shading to animate a black and white grid pattern with real-time light and shadow.
"It doesn't matter what [story] you want to tell-maps help bring it to life, they help you connect to spaces. And it has to be interactive. You have to be able to read, to click."
After the historical Iranian city of Isfahan was targeted by several major strikes, its governor Mehdi Jamalinejad claimed that serious damage had been inflicted even after blue shields were put on the roofs of culturally important buildings. This is an internationally recognized signal under the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
Distance does not soften the terror. It only deepens my helplessness. In moments like this, I realize that geography is not measured in miles, but in attachment. War rearranges distance. These days I find myself returning to "The Conference of the Birds," the 12th-century poem by Attar of Nishapur, seeking meaning through ancient wisdom about spiritual journeys and transformation.
The Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts said on Saturday that at least 56 museums, historical monuments and cultural sites in Iran have been damaged over the course of the war, which began on February 28, state-run news media reported. The heritage sites damaged include the Qajar-era Golestan Palace in Tehran.
A compleat Persian Palace--there are many minor variations and lesser imitations--is distinguished by its exaggerated moldings, numberless layers of cornices, elaborate grillework and columns galore. A Persian Palace brazenly combines motifs and wantonly disregards proportion and scale.
The city is remarkably walkable - there will be no need to take public transit or taxis once you've dropped your bags at your hotel - but there are a few key things to know when visiting Skopje, including the best places to get rakija, the historical sites that'll help you understand the country better and where to find the best speakeasy-adjacent casinos.
An artwork is not created when an artist finishes it. It is created when it's visible to an audience and when it becomes discourse. If there's no ecosystem, nothing works. Central Asia is in the midst of an unprecedented investment in such art infrastructure, including new permanent venues, purpose-built museums, and international biennials.
This dual ambition-questioning their own practice while contributing to a broader cultural discourse-frames each project as an evolving process, not a fixed outcome. The term "workshop" embedded in their name, New Almaty Architects Workshop, reflects this spirit of continuous testing and learning. Interiors become platforms for material research, atmospheric exploration, and critical self-evaluation. In a regional context where architectural discourse remains underrepresented internationally, their work emerges as a sustained effort to articulate identity through built experience.
An intact mosaic from Late Antiquity discovered during restoration of a historic municipal building in Istanbul is now a floor again, covered in plexiglass and welcoming visitors to the new Zeytinburnu Mosaic Museum. Visitors of Turkey's newest museum move across elevated glass walkways, suspended right above the original floors themselves. The mosaics are not relocated fragments mounted on walls, but surfaces that remain exactly where they were first laid, preserving their context for all to see.
Rising from the ground as a cultivated landscape of learning, the Uzbekistan Pavilion "Garden of Knowledge" at Expo 2025 Osaka translates national transformation into a spatial and material narrative.
Its historic architecture is known for its courtyards, domes, and blue ceramics, typical of its Timurid heritage. The capital of Uzbekistan today, it was absorbed into the Russian Empire in the 19th century, before becoming a Soviet republic. While part of the Soviet Union, the city became an example of modernization, celebrating socialist achievements in Asia. A devastating earthquake in 1966 accelerated this modernization as the city was reconstructed, leading to many of the modernist monuments for which Tashkent is known today.
US Vice President JD Vance arrived in Azerbaijan on February 10 as he continues a trip to the Caucasus aimed at shoring up support for a US-brokered peace deal with Armenia and to push a strategic transit corridor Washington sees as central to reshaping trade, energy, and influence in the region. Vance made the short flight from Yerevan to the Azerbaijani capital of Baku following two days of meetings with Armenian officials.