"Look at it this way"

On my recent trip to Iceland, I had some time to explore the Hafnarhús - an old industrial building down by the harbour which is now a modern art museum / gallery. Hafnarhús is located in the oldest part of Reykjavik, where the town’s boats and first docks lay. The building was erected in the 1930s and at the time it was one of the largest buildings in the country. It was renovated by Studio Grandi architects in 1998-2000 to house Reykjavík Art Museum. I was drawn there by one particular exhibit which had previously been Iceland's entry for the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2025. I read about this at the time. Lavaforming is a proposal on how the brutal force of lava can be turned into a valuable resource, capable of lowering atmospheric emissions through its future use as a sustainable building material.  The exhibition tells the story of a future society that has learned to tame lava flows, utilise them, and thus turn a local threat into an...