Jiayu Qin

THE PERMANENTLY IMPERMANENCE: Designing with Dynamic Landscapes in Southeast Iceland

Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (ESALA)

j.qin-15@sms.ed.ac.uk

Project description

This two-part project investigates how landscape architecture can respond to glacial retreat, climate-induced fragility, and ecological succession in Southeast Iceland. The first semester focused on Skaftafell, where strategies of soil-making, microbial inoculation, and pioneer planting transformed glacial moraines into evolving therapeutic grounds for future life.

Building on this regenerative foundation, the second semester shifted to Jökulsárlón, designing immersive and adaptive interventions along the lagoon edge. Floating iceberg platforms, sound shelters, and benthic terraces were introduced to support both seal habitats and human contemplation, rooted in seasonal change and sensory experience.

Together, the two projects form a continuous narrative of time-based design—moving from ground-making to water-based healing, and from slow ecological succession to immediate interspecies cohabitation. Both challenge permanence, embracing decay, migration, and transformation as therapeutic strategies.

Skaftafell Territory

The two teams focus on dynamic processes of soil-making and agroecological systems that adapt to Skaftafell's glacial retreat and its evolving landscapes. Agricultural fields are designed adjacent to birch patches, while riparian zones are cultivated collaboratively to buffer fields from riverbank erosion. These efforts are underpinned by site-specific analyses, emphasizing collaboration between teams to establish and sustain mosaic habitats.

Territory of the Project

Project Intension

This expedition delves into the evolving landscapes of Skaftafell, guided by the principles of Vital Materialism—a philosophical framework that recognizes non-human materials as active agents with intrinsic vitality, capable of influencing and shaping the world through their interactions. Viewing glacial sediments, soils, and ecosystems as collaborators, the project investigates Glacial Imprints—the traces left by glacier movements that embody both geological time and cultural narratives.

Through a 200-year speculative timeline, the project aligns human interventions with natural processes, fostering a dynamic relationship between sediment redistribution, soil-making, and ecological regeneration. Early phases focus on mimicking geological processes to accelerate soil creation and stabilize eroding landscapes, forming fertile substrates for experimental farming and birch forest establishment. Later stages introduce silvopasture and native species management, creating resilient habitats that balance agricultural productivity with biodiversity.

By integrating sediment-based instruments and adaptive interventions, the expedition transforms Skaftafell into a living laboratory where geological memory meets future sustainability. This strategy celebrates the interplay of permanence and impermanence, harnessing the vitality of materials to shape a regenerative mosaic of cultural narratives, ecological systems, and agricultural innovation, ensuring a resilient legacy for generations to come.

Site Map: Moraine (2034) - River Valley (2074) - Coastal Area (2134)）

Moraine Site Map 2034

Site Map: River Valley (2074）

Site Map: Coastal area (100-200 years）

Soil Making Process

Grinding – Breaking Down Sediments
Mimic glacial erosion by grinding stones into fine particles to create sediment “pigments,” symbolizing the first stage of soil formation.

Mixing – Creating a Substrate
Combine mineral sediments with organic matter (e.g., manure, plant residues, biochar) in compost pits to initiate soil formation and stratification.

Inoculating – Introducing Life
Enrich the substrate with microbes, fungi, and seeds to accelerate biological activity and nutrient cycling.

Nurturing – Encouraging Ecological Growth
Support soil maturity and vegetation growth with pioneer species like Leymus arenarius, Festuca rubra, and Lupinus nootkatensis.

Integrating Fieldwork, Instrument Work, and Strategy

Interventions Kettle Hole Composting Hub 2034 - Sediment Redistribution and Farming 2074 - Coastal Habitat Restoration and Agroforestry 2134

Kettle Hole Composting Hub 2034

Sediment Redistribution and Farming 2074

Coastal Habitat Restoration and Agroforestry 2074

Transformative Perspective for Farming Area

Glacier Retreating & Team 2 Interventions

Stage 1 (10 YEAR) Temporary container monitoring station

Stage 2 (150 YEAR) Successional Landscape Development

Stage 3 (200 YEAR) Highland Reforestation and Integrated Systems

Rewilding Phases

Current Condition: grazing area & problem (0 year)

Rewilding Phase 1.1

Soil Management: stablization & redistribution (10 year)

Rewilding Phase 1.2

Birch forest expansion and experimental farming (50 year)

Rewilding Phase 2

Re-engineered sheep role and agroecology farm (100 year)

Rewilding Phase 3

Forest management: creating firebreak, removing of unwanted undergrowth and early thinning (200 year)

Rewilding Phase 4

Silvopasture: creating a resilient and productive mosaic landscape (200 year +)

Rewilding Phase 5

The first semester’s project in Skaftafell focused on sediment as storyteller—unearthing geological memory through pigment-making, texture rubbings, and site-driven soil-making strategies. This foundation of material intelligence and ecological attentiveness directly informed the second semester’s therapeutic landscape proposal at Jökulsárlón. While the first explored the earth’s quiet voices embedded in rock and soil, the second amplifies atmospheric and animal rhythms—ice, sound, seal migration—as agents of spatial healing. Together, these projects form a continuous narrative: from grounding and regeneration to immersion and reciprocity, where therapeutic value emerges not from permanence, but from attunement to change.

Therapeutic Landscape at Jökulsárlón

Jökulsárlón, a rapidly evolving glacial lagoon in southeast Iceland, presents a unique opportunity to redefine therapeutic landscapes within a dynamic environment. Traditionally, healing landscapes have been associated with stable, green environments—forests, gardens, and tranquil water bodies. This project challenges that notion by exploring how a constantly shifting, impermanent white wilderness can foster well-being, contemplation, and emotional resilience.

Territory

Site Context & On-Site Materials

The project reimagines the southern shoreline of Jökulsárlón as a dynamic interface where ecological adaptation and cross-species well-being converge. As the glacier retreats and the lagoon expands, the design embraces this transformation not as loss, but as an opportunity to choreograph evolving relationships between harbor seals, microbial habitats, seasonal visitors, and climatic forces. Instead of imposing permanence, the interventions adopt a time-sensitive, sympoietic approach—working with sediment flows, thermal gradients, and seal life cycles to create restorative spaces that are both ecological and experiential. Anchored in place-based knowledge, the landscape becomes a slow-moving architecture of healing, where seal pup platforms drift with the tide, paths shift with the seasons, and materials weather into memory. The design offers not a spa in the traditional sense, but a performative terrain of care: a space where bodily encounters with ice, water, and wind cultivate resilience, and where therapeutic value is measured in shared rhythms between species, not just in human comfort.

Harbor Seals, Carbon Cycles, and the Ethics of Therapeutic Landscapes

Interventions Through Time

Transformative Perspective for Farming Area

Proposed Plan 2030

Proposed Plan 2075

Proposed Plan 2125+

Iceberg-Tethering Platforms & Sound Shelter

Anchored at the edge of Jökulsárlón, this intervention transforms melting icebergs into ephemeral platforms that serve both ecological and therapeutic functions. Constructed from repurposed timber, biodegradable nets, and basalt weights, these tethered platforms drift slowly with the ice while offering temporary haul-out habitats for seals and supporting microbial growth. As they decay, residual materials foster new aquatic niches, evolving into proto-islands for birds and fish. Nearby, an embedded sound shelter channels the lagoon’s sonic landscape—ice fractures, seal calls, water currents—into a low-tech, acoustically tuned retreat. Using floating resonators and passive collectors, natural sounds are transmitted into a quiet mound framed by birch and willow, cultivating a space of meditative listening and sensory recalibration. Together, these installations choreograph interspecies encounters through material temporality and acoustic intimacy, fostering a landscape that heals by attuning humans to the rhythms of nonhuman life.

Seals Platform & Sound Shelter Through Time

Spanning moraine to meltwater, this exhibition captures a journey through Iceland’s post-glacial terrains—where design becomes both witness and agent of transformation. The two projects demonstrate how site-specific strategies, rooted in temporal awareness and multispecies care, can foster new ecologies and rituals of healing. From grounding processes in sediment and soil to choreographing human and non-human presence in dynamic water landscapes, the work offers a layered response to climate change—not through control, but through co-adaptation.