The article discusses the basics of prehistoric dry wall construction in the Karst by focusing on three study cases. Given their spatial setting, the wall at Graček nad Famljami may be defined as a load bearing retaining wall, the cellar in Štanjel as a structure built in the slope and the defence tower at Ostri vrh as a free-standing structure built on level ground. The analysis of the construction method used for individual structures also includes the architectural principles that characterise such structures and is completed by an estimated quantity of utilised raw materials, time and number of participants.

On 15 July 2026 the European Commission opened infringement procedures against all twenty-seven Member States for incomplete transposition of the recast Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, whose transposition deadline had passed on 29 May 2026. This paper takes that general failure of implementation as its origin and asks a question that is institutional rather than technical: for a binding obligation with a fixed date, what has to be true for a state to deliver it, and is it true? Are reproducible capability-gap protocols set out. Binding obligations are enumerated with their dates from primary legal sources; for each, the delivery preconditions are identified; each precondition is tested against measured national indicators; and every gap is classified as a measurement, legal or capacity gap. The protocol requires only public data and is replicable for any Member State. Applied to Slovenia, it finds a country reporting a renovation rate but not the stock of which it is a rate, nor the primary energy metric in which the Article 9(2) obligation is expressed. Of the fifteen draft renovation plans assessed by the Joint Research Centre in July 2026, Slovenia is the only one omitting both the residential renovation trajectory and the non-residential performance thresholds. The co-owner consent threshold governing deep renovation is unchanged and is named as a barrier in the state's own renovation strategy. Close to half the construction workforce hold foreign nationality. A comparison with Serbia shows the carbon border adjustment mechanism substituting for the acquis as the operative decarbonisation pressure in a candidate country. The paper finds the binding constraint to be institutional rather than technological. In architecture and construction only legislation, and the standards it makes binding, are obligations; everything else is read by practice as a wishlist.

Integrating generative artificial intelligence into architectural education raises a question not only of whether AI helps, but of how its use should be structured. This paper empirically examines the AI Sparring model—a dialogic, critical approach to student–AI interaction—through a workshop in which architecture students designed a pavilion in a fortress. The three self-selected groups differed in the role AI played in the formation of the concept, not in its final presentation: Group A developed concepts traditionally, through sketches and physical working models, with AI serving only as a rendering tool at the end; Group B used AI directly as a generative tool; and Group C worked through structured critical dialogue with AI. The works were independently rated by three evaluators from three countries, alongside keyword analysis and assessment of reflective depth and theoretical references. Group C produced the most consistent concept quality, with no weak works, yet the single highest-rated work came from the traditional group—Sparring raises the “floor” rather than the “ceiling” of quality. At the same time, Group C reported the lowest sense of authorship, and qualitative analysis revealed “simulated depth”: theoretical references cited without genuine engagement. Because of the small, self-selected samples, the findings are read as exploratory and hypothesis-generating. The paper sheds light on the limits of reflective AI pedagogy and proposes concrete revisions to the model.

The adaptive reuse of historic hospitals requires comparing prospective functions against inherited architectural configurations, heritage constraints and contextual conditions, often under incomplete documentation. This study develops and internally verifies HARP v1.1, a hospital-specific rule-based decision-support framework designed to make preliminary reuse assessments transparent and traceable. Drawing on 43 comparative cases, 15 supplementary cases and iterative architectural modelling, the framework connects evidence-supported inputs, derived indicators and conditional rules to eight prospective reuse directions. Rule-normalised compatibility scores are reported separately from Evidence Adequacy. The original 19 software-conformance tests were passed, and deterministic replay reproduced the Pirot reference assessment. Mixed Use ranked first in the reference assessment, while sensitivity analyses and alternative scoring controls identified modelling dependencies that could have affected the rankings. The developmental coding pilot informed protocol refinement; a separate, focused, independent-coder check of the final 35 inputs for Pirot yielded 32/35 exact agreements (91.4%; unweighted Cohen’s κ = 0.859), with three one-level disagreements. The findings demonstrate the implementation consistency and reproducibility of the reference assessment, while the framework’s traceable computational structure supports the inspection of its assumptions and dependencies. Further evaluation across independent assessments and additional hospital cases is needed. HARP v1.1 is proposed as a research prototype for preliminary architectural screening and briefing, rather than as a validated predictor of optimal reuse.