Icelandic Lessons: Industrial Landscape

This volume presents the results of the first of a new series of studio courses offered by laba (Laboratoire Bâle), the satellite architecture and urban design studio of the École Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne (EPFL). These courses are designed to experiment with the architectural and urban forms and the environmental aesthetics of our advanced industrial society. Icelandic lessons: Industrial Landscape presents the projects carried out by students of the laba studio course 2014-15. These designs explore the intersection between industrial aesthetics and ecological environments, and interrogate the ambiguous limits between abstraction and representation, the artificial and the natural, the generic and the vernacular, the formal object and the landscape system. They propose an alternative perspective with respect to the traditional opposition of industry and nature by replacing conflict with complicity.