STILL WITNESSES TO A LANDSCAPE IN FLUX

Perched on the mountainside, the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) huts bear witness to both the beauty and the fragility of the Alps. These refuges, long built directly into the rock to shelter mountaineers, now find themselves on the front line of climate change. The accelerated melting of glaciers, the disappearance of permafrost and the destabilisation of moraines are transforming the landscape and threatening their foundations. Some huts have already had to be moved or rebuilt further away, on more stable ground. Others now lack water or see their access routes altered by erosion. Yet, as symbols of adaptation, these buildings continue to connect people to the high mountains. Their architecture is evolving: insulated, redesigned, sometimes perched on stilts to avoid warming the ground. Each refuge becomes an observatory of change, a point of balance between memory and modernity.