Iceland
Illustration: Lauren Nassef | Art Direction: Jelena Schulz The island of Iceland.

The University of Pennsylvania’s LA+ (Landscape Architecture Plus) journal has launched a $10,000 international ideas competition to design a hypothetical island. But before you start dreaming up your own land mass, consider these seven islands as inspiration.

Fire Island: The homes on this barrier island off the southern shore of New York’s Long Island are a renowned group of nature-informed modern gems, built for its party-happy inhabitants in the 1960s and still embraced today.

Java: The most populous island on Earth—with more than 141 million people— houses Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta. Its name has served as a synonym for coffee since its beans became a chief export in the early 20th century.

Elba: This Mediterranean island—now part of Italy—housed the exiled Napoleon Bonaparte for 300 days but has become just as well-known for tourism and wine.

Tierra del Fuego: Home to Ushuaia, Argentina’s southernmost city, the “Land of Fire” is really an archipelago named by Ferdinand Magellan in 1520.

Iceland: If you want sand, lava fields, mountains, glaciers, and rivers, look no further than the most sparsely populated (and most geographically intriguing) country in Europe.

Odaiba: Built by the Tokugawa shogunate nearly 170 years ago to defend Edo (now Tokyo) from seaborne threats, it has become a tourist destination and one of two places in the Tokyo area with an accessible shoreline.

Galveston Island: After a hurricane wiped out most of this Texas barrier island and its residents in 1900, the densely packed urban environment was rebuilt in a mixed style known as “Galveston vernacular.”