BY BRADFORD MCKEE
Landslag, of Reyk­javík, takes home the 2018 Rosa Barba Prize.
FROM THE UPCOMING NOVEMBER 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.
 
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?a low-set metal stair to follow the path?s course to the top. The stair is made up of modules three meters long and 1.5 meters wide that hold seven treads each between solid stringers with open risers. The units join together ?like a necklace on the slope,? Hauksson says.
The Crater Stairwa...