The Amber Road Trekking Cabin competition calls into question the periodic, historic challenge of the situated object: contextualizing an architectural artifact in the pastoral landscape. Along vast topographies of the Latvian Baltic coast, the project seeks a low impact, transient and inhabitable infrastructure in support of an anticipated hiking network transecting the various landscapes definitive of the region: pine forests, dunes, and white sand beaches. Successful projects respond to programmatic requirements of the brief with consideration of economic viability, securable enclosure, utilitarian function, constructibility, and climatic sensitivity. Evoking disciplinary antecedents, including lineages of the primitive — architectural speculations of Perrault and Laugier; the ideality of Eden, the pictorial and the picturesque — proposals consider modalities of contingency and circumstance demonstrated through exploration of typology, cultural gestalt, and monumentality. Successful projects evidence an awareness and invention of materiality, siting, programming, and negotiation of public and private relationship. The competition collectively provokes reflection of ecological conservation and its prescience in contemporary cultural and social practice, serving as an economic alternative to the commercialized, industrialized landscape definitive of global capital interests.