Could We Build Cities Using Iceland’s Lava In The Future? This Conceptual Project Has Volcanic Visions

Their latest endeavor, Lavaforming, is a hypothetical design project exploring whether lava from Iceland’s volcanoes could be used as a sustainable building material, eliminating the need for mining or non-renewable energy generation.

When freshly expelled, lava glows red-hot and has a thick, honey-like consistency. As it cools and hardens, it forms extrusive igneous rock. In theory, the molten lava could be guided into channels and then left to solidify into durable rock, creating rock-solid foundations for buildings, perhaps even entire cities. This is the bold vision Pálmadóttir and the team imagine for the 22nd-century planet.

“In our story, placed in 2150, we have harnessed the lava flow, just as we did with geothermal energy 200 years earlier in Iceland,” Pálmadóttir said in a statement sent to IFLScience.

“A lava flow can contain enough building material for the foundations of an entire city to rise in a matter of weeks without harmful mining and non-renewable energy generation. Lavaforming is exploring a building material that has never been used before. The theme is both a proposal and a metaphor – architecture is in a paradigm shift, and many of our current methods have been deemed obsolete or harmful in the long term. In our current predicament we need to be bold, think in new ways, look at challenges, and find the right resources,” she added.

This idea could only have emerged out of Iceland. Straddling the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the Eurasian and North American plates meet, this Nordic island is a hub of volcanoes. While its volcanic activity poses a lingering threat, it also offers a unique opportunity in the form of abundant geothermal energy, which accounts for 66 percent of the nation’s primary energy use.

There are also very few trees in Iceland, meaning wood is not an abundant building material. Around one-third of the island was once covered in woodland, but early Norse settlers slashed and burned countless trees for cattle farming and charcoal production.

 

There are many technical hurdles that need to be overcome before any of the lofty ideas behind Lavaforming could possibly come to fruition. One problem is that lava – 700 to 1,200°C (1,300 to 2,200°F) – is notoriously hard to control and previous attempts to guide its flow with earthen mounds and channels haven’t been fully successful. It can also solidify into irregular, unpredictable shapes depending on how quickly it cools, which isn’t ideal when aiming for a uniform, stable foundation.

However, it would be wrong to picture Lavaforming as anything other than an exploratory project. For now, it remains a conceptual experiment rooted in Iceland’s unique landscape, blending hypothetical science and design to rethink how we approach the world’s problems.

“Lavaforming mediates a bold vision and has the potential to draw attention to Iceland’s uniqueness and the role and importance of architecture in an age of uncertainty and complex challenges in a memorable way,” commented Halla Helgadóttir, commissioner and managing director of Iceland Design and Architecture.

“The project communicates the history, contemporary, and future of a country in constant development – and the ingenuity of people who are constantly adapting to challenging circumstances. The idea creates a discussion about the importance of creativity and imagination for the development of societies and the great value it brings when science and art work together,” Helgadóttir explained.

The Icelandic Minister of Culture and Business Affairs, Lilja D. Alfreðsdóttir, has recently announced that Lavaforming will be featured at the country’s national pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The exhibition – titled “Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.” – will run from May 10 to November 23, 2025.