Stitching Wood: Lissoni’s Latest Creation
Part of Listone Giordano’s Natural Genius collection, Nui is a series inspired by an ancient Japanese technique.
A monolith that captures and reflects the spectacular and unpredictable mood of the northern light. An immense ‘lighthouse’ at the entrance to the city port. A new icon for the Icelandic capital. On paper, the new home to the national symphony orchestra promises to be all this.
It has been designed by a team made up of Danish architects Henning Larsen and the artist Ólafur Eliasson, who have come up with a theatrical cladding for the whole building made out of thousands of glass, mirror and steel prisms that reflect natural light as well as showing – in a play of mirrored reflections – people within the theatre.
The building will be accessed across a spectacular piazza, also designed by Eliasson, that plays with the steam from the geothermic energy that comes up from the ground. The opera house, that will have a floor area of 25, 000 square metres and contain two concert halls, to hold audiences of 1800 and 450 and a conference hall (for 750) will be flanked by a luxury hotel complex, retail areas, cinema, housing and offices that cover another 25,000 square metres.
The entire intervention will become the country’s chief cultural complex, developed through a partnership between the public sector (government and city council) and the private sector (the company Portus Ltd). The design team were winners of an international competition that saw the particpation of, amongst others, Jean Nouvel and Norman Foster. Opening is planned for 2010.
http://www.olafureliasson.net
http://www.hlt.dk
Technology meets aesthetics, with Cordivari
With their rhythmically textured external surfaces, the Run and Seven Lines fan coils become natural elements in the landscape of contemporary interiors.
