hay bales unroll into trace of land installation across alpine terrain

ELSE Design reinterprets the hay bale as a sculptural installation

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 land art installation takes the form of a continuous path of unfurled hay bales that move with the contours of the alpine landscape. Removed from its functional role in farming, the hay bale becomes both sculptural and architectural, drawing attention to the relationship between human labor, tools, and the land.

all images by Gustav Willeit

Trace of Land becomes a site for reflection on land and labor

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 unfolds across the alpine pastures of Val Badia