Many dream of opening a restaurant, or starting their own culinary-centric company, but few have the experience or knowledge to do so. This was not the case for Kjartan Gíslason, a chef-turned-chocolatier and co-owner of Omnom…
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White ceramic tiles contrast with sections of chipboard inside this Reykjavik fashion boutique by local design office HAF Studio (+ slideshow).
Icelandic designers Hafsteinn Júlíusson and Karitas Sveinsdóttir of HAF Studio fitted out the four-storey shop interior for Danish clothing label SUIT. Located on a popular shopping street, the store sells a range of mens’ and women’s clothing.
Designer Hafsteinn Júlíusson said the glossy white tiles were chosen to create a contrast with the oriented strand board – a kind of engineered wood that was used for walls and joinery throughout the boutique.
“We wanted to add a bit of an unexpected twist,” Júlíusson told Dezeen. “We think these tiles enhance the refined roughness that we were aiming for.”
The tiles create geometric grids across parts of the wooden walls, but also extend down to cover sections of the concrete floor.
“More known for serving slaughterhouses or swimming pools, the tiles give a good contrast against the warm wood and the raw concrete,” added Júlíusson.
On the ground floor, strips of fluorescent lighting spell out the word ‘suit’, next to a tiled serving counter with low-hanging black pendant lamps, also designed by the studio.
Shelving units are mounted to the walls to display folded clothes, while other garments are piled up on benches or hung from orange clothing racks.
Cheeky phrases are printed onto the walls of the shop to help visitors find their way around – the words “Do you fit in?” highlight the entrance to the fitting rooms.
Photography is by Gunnar Sverrisson.
Here’s a short description from HAF Studio:
SUIT
The clothing brand SUIT opened downtown Reykjavík recently. The store was designed by HAF Studio which is an Icelandic interdisciplinary design studio run by designers Karitas Sveinsdóttir and Hafsteinn Júlíusson.
The design intention behind the new store was to tie the brand’s raw and rough character together with clever and elaborate detailing. With this in mind, the HAF team created a space that offers a unique customer experience beyond that of the conventional clothing store environment.
The raw concrete floors and walls meet a warm OSB wood cladding where white glossy ceramic tiles give the store a refined finish. Finally orange and black fluorescent details create contrasts and highlights together with crisp lighting.
Client: GK Clothing
Collaborators: Ása Ninna Pétursdóttir & Guðmundur Hallgrímsson
Year: 2013
The post Reykjavik boutique by HAF Studio
mixes chipboard with ceramic tiles appeared first on Dezeen.
L’agence d’architecture islandaise PK Arkitektar a construit la maison B25 en Islande, à Reykjavík. La particularité de cette maison est qu’un mur de la façade a été fait en pierres volcaniques rouges qui cachent la porte d’entrée dans un creux. Cette bâtisse minimaliste est à découvrir dans la suite en photos.
Panoramic views of the dramatic Icelandic landscape are offered from this holiday home near Reykjavik by local studio PK Arkitektar (+ slideshow).
PK Arkitektar designed Árborg House for a mossy hill high above the glacial valley of the Hvita river, a two-hour drive from the Icelandic capital.
The single-storey house is clad in concrete, which is textured with vertical lines and contains gravel from the river below as an aggregate.
Moss that was removed to make way for the structure has been reinstalled on the roof.
The house is entered through a long corridor that leads from the back, past the garage.
Guest bedrooms are accessed along another corridor that runs adjacent to the entrance passage.
A linear volume positioned perpendicular to these rooms is glazed entirely across the longest facade, facing the valley and mountains to the west.
Kitchen, dining and living spaces as well as the master suite are arranged along this section, connected along the glass wall so the view is uninterrupted.
Internal surfaces are covered throughout with smooth concrete and teak boards, which conceal cupboards and drawers in the kitchen.
The wood continues out onto the terrace, where it is intended to weather and blend in with the landscape.
“Doors and terraces are clad with teak boards that will gradually weather to a colour grade to match the seasonal moss and the broken concrete surface,” said the architects.
Projecting out from the terrace, an infinity pool containing a circular hot tub has pebbles from the riverbed covering its floor.
Photography is by Rafael Pinho and Helge Garke.
Here’s a description from the architects:
Árborg House
This vacation house is located on the banks of the Hvita river, a two-hour drive East of Reykjavik. The site is a moss-covered hill with a view over a quiet bend in the glacier-formed river. In the spring, the river carries the icebergs from the glacier towards the sea some 100km away.
The approach to the vacation house is from the top of the hill. The building is organised as a sequence of events: from the entrance porch through the closed courtyard into the living space and out onto the terrace at the end.
Living, dining, kitchen, and master bedroom are all arranged in one continuous room. This enables panoramic views of the river and the distant mountains to the west.
The exterior is a broken surface of light grey fair-faced concrete. The gravel from the riverbed is blended into the concrete, and is revealed in the broken surface. It harmonises the outside walls with the moss of the surrounding landscape.
Leftover moss from the footprint of the house covers the roof. It was kept aside and regularly nursed during the building process, before being reinstalled on the roof.
Doors and terraces are clad with teak boards that will gradually weather to a colour grade to match the seasonal moss and the broken concrete surface. Fair-faced concrete walls through out the entire interior are matched with untreated teak boards on floors and ceilings.
Selected pebbles from the nearby riverbed cover the bottom of the infinity pool. The pool projects out in front of the terrace, and serves as a railing which otherwise would have interrupted the view of the river.
The post Árborg House by PK Arkitektar overlooks
an Icelandic glacial valley appeared first on Dezeen.
An ancient Icelandic calendar influenced the layout and interiors in this Reykjavík hotel designed by local architects TARK and HAF (+ slideshow).
Reykjavík Lights Hotel by TARK and HAF comprises 12 corridors, one for each month of the year, and rooms are themed around specific days in the traditional calendar.
“A key element is the hotel’s unique visual calendar,” HAF founder Hafsteinn Juliusson told Dezeen. “Inspired by the ancient Icelandic calendar Rímtafla, it reflects the year-round daylight conditions in Iceland.”
In the lobby, a large spherical light hangs above a wooden polygonal bar.
The lobby wall is decorated in graphics based on star constellations that can be seen from Reykjavík.
Graphic designer Sveinn Þorri Davíðsson worked in collaboration with the architects to design the typography for the hotel’s signage and stationery, which is based on historic Icelandic runes.
One hundred and five custom-made wallpapers were created for the hotel, which correspond to the colour spectrums of Iceland’s daylight conditions.
Room are decorated with an eclectic mix of frames, which contain artworks showing the country’s traditions and seasons.
Photography is by Gunnar Sverrisson & Vigfús Birgisson.
Here is some more information from the architects:
Reykjavík Lights is a new concept hotel managed by Keahotels. The hotel design is a collaboration between architecture studio Tark and HAF. Team HAF developed the concept, interior and visual design of the hotel. The concept revolves around Iceland’s ever-changing light conditions and how they reflect Icelandic everyday life.
A key element is the hotel’s unique visual calendar. Inspired by the ancient Icelandic calendar Rímtafla, it reflects the year-round daylight conditions in Iceland. The visual calendar Rímtafla is divided by months and distributed onto 12 corridors. Each corridor represents a month of the year and each room is linked to a specific day in the ancient Icelandic calendar.
The rooms are decorated with unique color palettes expressing Iceland’s unique color spectrums. Artworks inside the rooms demonstrate local and seasonal traditions and circumstances, such as the Northern lights or the Midnight sun. In all, 105 custom made wallpapers were produced for the hotel. Throughout the hotel you will find various decorations and information about Icelandic culture, history and light.
Reykjavík Lights’ visual identity was developed in collaboration with graphic designer Sveinn Þorri Davíðsson. The typography is based on ancient Icelandic runes and the color scheme is an interpretation of the Icelandic light.
The post Reykjavík Lights Hotel by TARK
and HAF for Keahotels appeared first on Dezeen.
Images of fantasy goddesses are hidden in brightly-coloured graphics on the walls, floor and ceiling of this exhibition space in Reykjavík, Iceland (+ slideshow).
Berlin-based Icelandic graphic designer Siggi Eggertsson created a set of eight posters that fit together in different ways to form a seamless, patterned wallpaper across the interior of Spark Design Space.
Eggertsson used a mixture of curved and straight lines to generate the complex pattern. “My work is all based on grids and construction of geometric shapes,” Eggertsson told Dezeen.
“I normally work with warmer and less saturated colours, but for this exhibition I wanted to create something overly colourful, so I decided to use only pure CMYK colour blends,” he said.
On closer inspection, the graphics merge together to form images of women or ‘skvís’, the Icelandic term for a young, pretty and smart girl.
“They are sort of imaginary muses, said Eggertsson. “I knew I wanted to make a system of modular posters that could connect to each other in numerous ways to create a seamless pattern, but didn’t really know what to draw.”
“At first I thought about creating abstract patterns but then realised it would be more fun to draw pretty girls,” he added.
The exhibition continues until 16 November.
Here’s some information from the exhibition organisers:
SKVÍS at Spark Design Space
There is a special relationship between mind, sight, fine muscular movements and hands which, together with its reflection in the virtual world of digital technology, has given birth to a new species of of homo sapiens. The American science fiction writer William Gibson wanted to refer to this new-born species as “Cyber-punks”.
That was 30 years ago. This species has from early childhood had an almost unbreakable bond with a keyboard, a computer screen and a mouse. The infinite virtual world seems to be a dwelling place, an extension, and a reflection of their feelings and thoughts. When this proximity reaches a certain stage they become one and the same, the virtual world and the species.
Siggi Eggertsson is an artist of this new world. He was born in 1984 and will turn 30 next year. His life has been a constant journey in the virtual world almost since birth. He has never paused to consider the ordinary. He dives deep into the basic squares which the visual presentation of the screenshot and the printed matter are based on.
If patterns were a pure geometry without reference to the biological world such as flora or fauna, they were arabic or eastern. Patterns with a reference to flora or fauna, plants and birds, originated in Rome. A combination of the abstract and the real are found in Indian or Chinese mandalas.
The methodology is in fact the same. Squares based on horizontal and vertical lines. The density of the squares, or the resolution as we now call it, is the only thing that decides whether we can read into the pattern a representation of something real. The highest resolution digital photograph can be blown up until it ends up like squares on a ruled page without a reference to anything real. Siggi also uses a quarter of a circle pasted into a square – that is what his personal style is based on.
The exhibition consists of eight modular posters. The nature of the pattern is almost always spiritual – a suggestion of divine beauty. This beauty of infinity is always present in Siggi’s work. This may be related to methods for expanding ones mind, whether by use of substances or meditation.
That world has goddesses floating about, as can be seen in Siggi Eggertsson’s representation. He invites us on a guided journey as someone who has seen a world none of us have seen. This is a journey into infinity where we fleetingly catch a glimpse of the goddesses and make the briefest of eye contact.
The post SKVÍS by Siggi Eggertsson
at Spark Design Space appeared first on Dezeen.
We all know the adage, Greenland is icy and Iceland is green. But really, not many know much more of the large island nation inhabited by just 320,000 people. On our most recent trip to Iceland to visit the capital city of Reykjavik for ); return…
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Whether it’s a cookie factory turned into a hostel or, in this case, furniture inspired by candy, Icelandic design is often conscious of the country’s collective sweet tooth. Driven by childhood memories of Reykjavik’s old chocolate factory—and the rich smells that would blanket…
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Copenhagen studio Henning Larsen Architects have completed a concert hall and conference centre in Reykjavík, Iceland, in collaboration with artist Olafur Eliasson.
Panes of clear and colour-coated glass surround a steel framework of twelve-sided modules on the south facade of the Harpa Concert and Conference Centre.
Inspired by basalt crystals, the faceted glass scatters reflections of the surrounding harbour and sky, and presents a glittering wall of light after dark.
A flattened version of this geometry surrounds the other elevations of the building.
Three large concert halls occupy the first floor, including one finished entirely in red, while a smaller fourth hall on the ground floor provides a venue for intimate performances and banquets.
Visitors access the main foyer from a south-facing entrance, while staff and performers enter the backstage area from the north.
The centre was delivered with local studio Batteriid Architects.
The project was featured on Dezeen last year, when it was still under construction – see our earlier story here.
See more projects by Henning Larsen Architects on Dezeen here, and more projects by artist Olafur Eliasson here.
Photography is by Nic Lehoux.
Here are some more details from Henning Larsen Architects:
Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre in Reykjavik gathers inspiration from the northern lights and the dramatic Icelandic scenery.
Situated on the border between land and sea, the Centre stands out as a large, radiant sculpture reflecting both sky and harbour space as well as the vibrant life of the city.
The spectacular facades have been designed in close collaboration between Henning Larsen Architects, the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and the engineering companies Rambøll and ArtEngineering GmbH from Germany.
The Concert Hall and Conference Centre of 28,000 m2 is situated in a solitary spot with a clear view of the enormous sea and the mountains surrounding Reykjavik.
The Centre features an arrival and foyer area in the front of the building, four halls in the middle and a backstage area with offices, administration, rehearsal hall and changing room in the back of the building.
The three large halls are placed next to each other with public access on the south side and backstage access from the north.
The fourth floor is a multifunctional hall with room for more intimate shows and banquets.
Seen from the foyer, the halls form a mountain-like massif that similar to basalt rock on the coast forms a stark contrast to the expressive and open facade.
At the core of the rock, the largest hall of the Centre, the main concert hall, reveals its interior as a red-hot centre of force.
The project is designed in collaboration with the local architectural company, Batteríið Architects.
Harpa – Reykjavik Concert Hall and Conference Centre forms part of an extensive harbour development project in Reykjavik, the East Harbour Project.
As the name indicates, the overall objective of the project is to expand and revitalise Reykjavik’s eastern harbour with a new downtown plaza, a shopping street, a hotel, residential buildings, educational institutions and mixed industry.
The overall intention is to generate life in the area and to create a better connection between the city centre and the harbour.
Situated outside the city’s building mass, the building will become a significant icon in the city – a visual attractor with a powerful and varying expression.
The isolated location will mean that, to a great extent, the changing climatic and light effects will be exposed in the facades of the concert building, often in contrast to the narrow and shady streets in the rest of the city.
Henning Larsen Architects has designed the facade of the Concert Hall in close collaboration with the local architects Batteríið Architects and the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson.
As the rest of the building, the design of the facades is inspired by nature.
In particular, the characteristic local basalt formations have provided the inspiration for the geometric facade structure.
Made of glass and steel in a twelve-sided space-filling geometric modular system called the ‘quasibrick’, the building appears a kaleidoscopic play of colours, reflected in the more than 1000 quasibricks composing the southern facade.
The remaining facades and the roof are made of sectional representations of this geometric system, resulting in two-dimensional flat facades of five and sixsided structural frames.
In order to develop these ideas the team worked with three-dimensional computer models, finite element modelling, various digital visualisation techniques as well as maquettes, models and mock-ups.
Light and transparency are key elements in the building.
The crystalline structure, created by the geometric figures of the facade, captures and reflects the light – promoting the dialogue between the building, city and surrounding landscape.
One of the main ideas has been to “dematerialise” the building as a static entity and let it respond to the surrounding colours – the city lights, ocean and glow of the sky.
In this way, the expression of the facade changes according to the visual angle.
With the continuously changing scenery, the building will appear in an endless variation of colours.
Click above for larger image
Click above for larger image
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| Convention Centre by Eva Jiricna and A.I Design s.r.o. | Auditorium and Congress Hall by Estudio Barozzi Veiga | Kauffman Center by Safdie Architects |
Icelandic design collective Vík Prjónsdóttir presented a collection of wool blankets at DesignMarch in Reykjavík last week. (more…)
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