"Trace of Land by ELSE Design reinterprets the hay bale as a spatial installation that unfolds across the pastures of Val Badia in the Italian Dolomites. Presented as part of SMACH 2025, the international open-air art biennale, the project transforms an agricultural object into a canopy-like structure that follows the terrain, offering places for shade, rest, and gathering. The installation takes the form of a continuous path of unfurled hay bales that move with the contours of the alpine landscape."
"Typically seen as iconic remnants of agrarian life, hay bales are in fact products of industrialized processes, bundled, stored, and transported by machinery. In Trace of Land, this industrial form is loosened and reshaped, creating a structure that alternates between lying on the ground and lifting lightly to form shaded passages. The result is a temporary canopy that mediates between agricultural efficiency and natural setting."
"The installation by ELSE Design Studio aligns with SMACH's 2025 theme, la cu, the Ladin word for whetstone, a tool used to sharpen harvesting blades, by highlighting the reciprocity between human work and landscape. Visitors are invited to walk along and beneath the structure, using rectangular bales arranged as seating to pause and reflect. As time passes, the hay will naturally decompose, returning to the soil and completing a cycle of use and renewal, reinforcing the installation's dialogue between cultivation, transformation, and the environment."
Trace of Land reinterprets bundled hay bales as a continuous canopy-like installation across Val Badia pastures in the Italian Dolomites. The hay bales are unfurled into a path that follows alpine contours, alternating between lying on the ground and lifting to form shaded passages and seating. The arrangement shifts an industrial agricultural form toward sculptural and architectural presence, emphasizing connections between human labor, tools, and landscape. The installation aligns with SMACH 2025's theme la cu by underscoring reciprocity between work and land. The hay will naturally decompose and return to soil, completing a cycle of use, renewal, and environmental dialogue.
Read at designboom | architecture & design magazine
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