Iceland: one of the youngest geologies in the world and hazy object of my adolescent longing. An impressive land of superlatives and extremes—the kind every travel guide extols at length. And yet there is no doubt that its landscape, its light, and its weather imprint themselves upon human awareness and the act of building itself: from daylighting and wind to building physics and structural engineering, these harsh conditions demand rigorous attention in both design and execution, all while under high economic pressure.

A cultural emancipation movement emerged in the 19th century after centuries of foreign rule, sparking a search for a distinct architectural language: moving away from the traditional turf house toward concrete, which, within a few decades, became the national building material. That Iceland passed a planning and urban-development act as early as 1921—with fewer than 100,000 inhabitants—was progressive by the standards of its day and can be read as a profound cultural-political statement.

Today, Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. In an area larger than Austria, fewer than 400,000 people reside, even as the nation ranks among the fastest-growing in Europe, driven largely by immigration. Since the 2008 financial crisis, the economy has faced considerable strain, dependent primarily on fishing and tourism. Both industries leave indelible marks on the built environment: massive hotel complexes, infrastructure, and entire settlements carve themselves into the landscape, while fish farms reshape the fjords.

One cannot help but wonder: how does one build here? How do you design when confronted with a landscape that defies human scale? What does “building culture” mean in a place that is still in the making?
After two weeks on the island and a full circuit of its perimeter, returning to Reykjavík, one thing was clear: these questions deserved an episode of their own.
To answer them, I met with three practices, each wrestling with the Icelandic context in its own way: Studio Granda, which has spent decades quietly shaping Iceland’s architectural identity, from Reykjavík City Hall to the Supreme Court; PK Arkitektar, whose founder, Pálmar Kristmundsson, brought a design sensibility back from years of study in Japan and introduced a new scale to Reykjavík with Turninn—a high-rise that remains controversial in an otherwise low-lying city; and Basalt Architects, who, with the Retreat at the Blue Lagoon, placed architecture—where the earth itself acts as a co-designer—directly into an 800-year-old lava flow.

Three practices, three positions—and yet, one shared question: what does it mean to build in a landscape larger than any architecture?

Excerpts from conversations between Kathrin Huber and Steve Christer (Studio Granda), Anja Schröter and Pálmar Kristmundsson (PK Arkitektar), and Hrólfur Karl Cela (basalt).

https://studiogranda.is/
https://pk.is/
https://www.basalt.is/