Nordurbakki
Projects
Nordurbakki Project: 2006-2016 |
Location: Hafnarfjörður, Iceland
Photographs: Åke E:son Lindman
Completion Year: 2016
Floor Area: 11040 m²
Typology: Residential
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Pálmar Kristmundsson, Fernando de Mendonça, Ólafur Jónsson, Bernd Kolb, Peter Foellbach and Nicholas Crowley |
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Teiknistofan Storð (Landscape) |
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NordurbakkiProject: 2006-2016
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Pálmar Kristmundsson, Fernando de Mendonça, Ólafur Jónsson, Bernd Kolb, Peter Foellbach and Nicholas Crowley |
Teiknistofan Storð (Landscape) |
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Location: Hafnarfjörður, Iceland
Photographs: Åke E:son Lindman
Completion Year: 2016
Floor Area: 11040 m²
Typology: Residential
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The Nordurbakki project is a component of a masterplan whose aim is to extensively remodel the seafront close to the old harbour of Hafnarfjörður, a small town between Reykjavík and Keflavík International Airport. The project consists of a compound of two apartment blocks enclosing a large rectangular courtyard open on the short sides, one of which faces the town and the other the sea. Each block is composed of three floors of eight apartments per floor, plus a smaller penthouse level featuring two sea-facing units and two smaller units. The cladding consists of stretched metallic panels with a gold tone.
The most remarkable part of the Nordurbakki project is definitely the inner courtyard. Inspired by modernist Brazilian landscape masters, this inner piazza is raised 1.2 metres above street level, with irregular and curved platforms of wood and flora bounded by corten steel arranged in a man-made topography above a bed of black pebbles and paths of dark concrete tile.
Stretched out to the sea like two ships at anchorage in Hafnarfjörður’s harbour, the buildings enclose a sort of classical podium such that the real protagonist of the space is the sea—a poem to the ocean, written in the stark language of architecture.
Photography by Åke E:son Lindman