Smoke is fleeting. The craft endures.
Buildner invites architects and designers to explore how architecture can give expression to Iceland’s tradition of smoking fish. Inspired by a family craft carried forward across generations, the competition seeks a smokehouse that celebrates the relationship between people, place and the patient work of making food.
- 9m²Today’s smoking chamber, built by the previous generation and still in use
- 10–15m²The new smoking chamber: a modest increase, not mass production
- 65–100m²The whole programme, from fish preparation to a small tasting room
A lake, a farm, a craft
Around Lake Mývatn in northern Iceland, fishing and sheep farming have supported local communities for centuries. The lake and nearby rivers supplied fish that became an important part of the regional diet, eaten fresh and preserved in several ways. Smoking huts remain a familiar part of the area’s food culture, and producers continue to prepare both fish and meat.
Days of smoke, years of fuel
Cleaned, salted and rinsed, the trout are suspended by their tails from long, narrow wooden sticks and carried into the smokehouse, where they hang above the smoke source, with open flames avoided. Smoking can continue over several days, and in some traditional operations the smoke is kept going through the day and night. Birch, twigs and dried sheep dung have all been used as fuel. The dung may dry and mature for several years before use, so a batch of smoked food can depend on work begun long before the fish is caught.
Knowledge passed between generations
These traditions continue through people who practise them. Local producers describe learning to smoke fish from relatives, including an uncle teaching a nephew, while other families trace their work across several generations. Around Mývatn, family smokehouses still produce food for customers and restaurants, keeping this knowledge in regular use.
Give the craft an architectural voice
Architecture can become a language for these stories. Through space, light, material and movement, a building can communicate the care invested in a process and awaken curiosity about its meaning.
How might a place express patience, reveal transformation or evoke the presence of generations who have practised the same familiar gestures?
The aspiration is for architecture with a sense of wonder: a place whose identity grows from the activity within it and leaves a lasting impression on those who encounter it.
The site: a working family farm
The competition site forms part of a working family farm in the Lake Mývatn area of northern Iceland. The farm accommodates residential life, sheep farming and a small enterprise producing traditionally smoked trout. The existing buildings described by the client include:
- Two residential houses
- Two sheep barns
- A fish-processing building | Separate rooms for gutting and packing fish
- A traditional smokehouse | Built by the previous generation, valued for its form and performance, still used for its intended purpose
- A second, concrete smokehouse | Used less frequently, mainly for smoking meat at Christmas
Participants may incorporate the existing smokehouse into their proposal, adapt or extend it, or propose a separate new building. The client identifies the protected status of Mývatn and Laxá, where new construction requires environmental permission, and smoke-producing spaces must sit far enough from the homes to limit smoke disturbance.
Awards
The Buildner Medal 50,000 €
Key dates
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Closing date for registration 22 July 2027
Competition Q&A deadline 27 July 2027
Project submission deadline 6 September 2027
Announcement of the winners 19 October 2027
Registration fees
Advanced 28 Jan – 1 Apr | 110-120 €
Last minute 2 Apr – 22 Jul | 120-140 €
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