The Site

The Curonian Spit is a 98 km long and 0.4–4 km wide elongated sand-dune peninsula extending across Lithuania and the Kaliningrad region, bordered by the Baltic Sea to the west and the Curonian Lagoon to the east. It is a unique, vulnerable sandy landscape, which was formed around the 3rd millennium BC. After extensive destructive logging in the 17th and 18th centuries, the dunes began to shift, covering most of the oldest settlements. The preservation of the ever-changing landscape became essential to its existence. Consequently, the local inhabitants had to adapt to the environmental changes in order to survive. This interaction between humans and nature formed the Curonian Spit as a cultural landscape.

The Concept

The project investigates a possible parallel between the visualization of the landscape and the conceptualization of its identity. It is constituted as three architectural interventions, which merge with the material systems of water, wind, and sand and evolve from these natural physical processes. Consequently, the structures influence the further formation of the landscape, highlight change, and, in a poetic way, preserve the cultural aspect of the site. Above all, these architectural interventions could also be defined as monuments and act as linking elements between the place and its memory by identifying the process of negotiation between man and nature in physical and mental terms.

Although there are no plans to build the structures, that’s almost beside the point. More art than architecture, the project provokes contemplation of the region’s unique geography and its history.

The first intervention, Sandhouse, is a layered vision. It consists of a grid of vertical concrete walls simply erected on the dunes. The structure resembles the grid of straws that was manually applied to the landscape in the 16th century to prevent it from shifting, recreate a layer of vegetation, and protect the local villages from being buried. It acts as a device that allows the sand to continue shifting, while its static presence highlights the change and reveals the curvature of the landscape. Over time, it might be completely covered by sand and transformed into future ruins. In a process similar to what happened to villages buried by natural destructive forces, this intervention creates a mechanism that links events, configuration, and time.

The protective ridge, shaped through the interaction of human intervention and natural processes, extends along the seacoast of the Curonian Spit for approximately 100 km. It is one of the most expressive elements of the Curonian Spit’s cultural landscape. Its purpose is to capture sand carried inland from the sea and prevent it from penetrating farther into the mainland. Construction of the protective dune ridge began in 1803. Today, in some places, it reaches 10–12 m in height and 70–80 m in width.

The “Windhouse” intervention is a corridor-like concrete monolith formed using an arrangement of logs as formwork—a tactile reference to the Spit’s history of deforestation and reforestation. Concrete is poured around the logs, which remain embedded within the structure. The intervention then acts as a timing device: over the years, wind, sand, and weather gradually erode the wood, revealing the concrete and leaving behind a perforated shell marked by the former logs. “Windhouse” is intended to become a future ruin, making the ephemeral nature of human settlement too poignant to ignore.

This archival photograph documents the planting and maintenance of the protective coastal ridge along the Curonian Spit. The ridge was shaped through the interaction of human activity and natural processes to capture sand carried inland from the Baltic Sea. Its stabilisation required continuous manual work, including planting vegetation and reinforcing the dune surface. These efforts helped protect the mainland while forming one of the most distinctive elements of the Curonian Spit’s cultural landscape.

The Lighthouse reflects the cultural character of the Curonian Spit. Conceived as a metaphor for amber—an artifact and archive of the landscape—it refers to the material that, as early as 3000–2500 BC, acted as a catalyst for the formation of the Baltic tribes and their cultural identity.

Rising from the Baltic Sea, the main tower is anchored by a foundation and serves as a cultural beacon and a solitary retreat for one writer: a place to live, keep the fire burning and record memories. Its massive concrete form evokes a piece of amber washed ashore and is intended to endure decades of exposure to the sea. The smaller concrete volumes surrounding the tower have no foundations. They move and tilt with the shifting ground, registering the continuous transformation of the landscape.

Inside, the structure unfolds as a maze of narrow, habitable spaces. Water, sand and light penetrate the concrete shell, confronting the inhabitant with the elemental forces that shape the Curonian Spit. The Lighthouse becomes both a shelter and a living archive—a place where landscape, memory and time remain in constant exchange.