Posted in AWARDS, CLIMATE, DETAILS, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, HABITAT, IN THE ISSUE, MAINTENANCE, PLANTS, PRESERVATION, RECREATION, SPECIES, THE BACK, VIEWS, tagged arctic thyme, Atlantic Ocean, Barcelona International Biennial of Landscape Architecture, bog bilberry, Brad McKee, crater, Gary Hilderbrand, glacier, Iceland, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne, landscape architect, Landscape Architecture, landscape design, landscape designers, Landslag, lava, lichens, mosses, necklace, Reykjavík, Rosa Barba International Landscape Prize, Saxhóll Crater, Saxhóll Crater Stairway, Snæfellsjökull, stair, Thrainn Hauksson, tourism, volcano on October 11, 2018|
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BY BRADFORD MCKEE
Landslag, of Reykjavík, takes home the 2018 Rosa Barba Prize.
The site, the Saxhóll Crater, is part of Snæfellsjökull, a volcano on a far western finger of Iceland that is the starting point for Journey to the Center of the Earth, the 1864 science fiction novel by Jules Verne. This worn-down cone of lava, 125 feet high, is a popular stop for tourists who want to walk up to its summit amid patches of multicolored mosses, lichens, arctic thyme, and bog bilberry to see views of the Atlantic Ocean and the surrounding glacier cap, which is expected to disappear within 50 years. Tourism is up sharply in Iceland, quadrupling since 2010 to two million visitors in 2017. The wear was evident on the crater’s flank, where the path to the summit was degrading and splitting into multiple tracks, not helped by random, gabion-like treads where the going got especially rough.
The project of preserving the crater’s fragile ecology along with access to people fell to Thrainn Hauksson, of the landscape architecture office Landslag, in Reykjavík. Hauksson’s office designed the simplest thing possible— (more…)
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