BIG + TNT Nuuk + Ramboll Nuuk + Arkitekti comprise the winning team to design the new National Gallery of Greenland in the country's capital Nuuk, among invited proposals totaling 6 Nordic architects.
Located on a steep slope overlooking the most beautiful of Greenland's fjords, the 3000 square meters National Gallery will serve as a cultural and architectural icon for the people of Greenland. The new museum will combine historical and contemporary art of the country in one dynamic institution. The winning proposal was selected by a unanimous museum board among 6 proposals, including Norwegian Snøhetta, Finnish Heikkinen-Komonen, Islandic Studio Granda and Greenlandic Tegnestuen Nuuk.
"The Board has a clear vision: to work for the establishment of an internationally oriented highly professional institution that communicates the continuous project of documenting and developing the Greenlandic national identity through art and culture. Our dream is a national gallery where historic and contemporary art meets circumpolar pieces, Nordic and world art in general. Our dream is an institution that stimulates our curiosity, awake our excitement with its thought-provoking design and where we all feel at home. Selecting a prominent architect as BIG, I am sure that our chances of realizing that dream are good," Tuusi Josef Motzfeldt, Greenland's National Gallery of Art.
Greenland National Gallery of Art by BIG
Even as BIG crests an international wave of high-profile commissions, it adds the winning design for a prestigious new National Gallery of Greenland.
View Article details
- 11 February 2011
- Nuuk
As a projection of a geometrically perfect circle on to the steep
slope, the new gallery is conceived as a courtyard building that
combines a pure geometrical layout with a sensitive adaption to the
landscape. The three-dimensional imprint of the landscape creates a
protective ring around the museum's focal point, the sculpture
garden where visitors, personnel, exhibition merge with culture and
nature, inside and outside.
"The Danish functionalistic architecture in Nuuk is typically square
boxes which ignore the unique nature of Greenland. We therefore
propose a national gallery which is both physically and visually in
harmony with the dramatic nature, just like life in Greenland is a
symbiosis of the nature. We have created a simple, functional and
symbolic shape, where the perfect circle is supplied by the local
topography which creates a unique hybrid between the abstract shape
and the specific location"
-Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Partner, BIG.
The slope opens up the sculpture garden towards the city and the
view, framing both the sculpture garden and museum functions. A rough
looking external façade of white concrete will patina over time and
adjust to the local weather, while the circular inner glass façade
will consist of a simple and refined frame which contrasts the rough
nature and compliments the beautiful view.
"The building will with its simplistic coarseness and harmony with
the landscape become a symbol of the current independent Greenlandic
artistic and architectural expression."
-Andreas Klok Pedersen, Partner & Project Leader, BIG.
The circular shape of the gallery enables a flexible division of the
exhibition into different shapes and sizes, creating a unique
framework for the museum's art. Visitor access to the exhibition
happens through a covered opening created by a slight lift in the
façade into a lobby with a 180-degree panorama view towards the
sculpture garden and the fjord as well as access to the common museum
functions, including ticket counters, wardrobe, boutique and a café.
The new gallery will create more activity at the waterfront by
attracting the whole area is interconnected by a path which like the
museum, forms after the shifting inclinations of the terrain. The
locals and visitors will be able to admire the clear shape of the
gallery which appears as a sculpture or a piece of land-art.
"Greenland National Gallery for Art will play a significant role for
the citizens of Greenland and the inhabitants of Nuuk as a cultural,
social, political, urban and architectural focal point that opens
towards the city and the world through its perfect circular geometry
and shape."
-Bjarke Ingels, Founder & Partner, BIG.
Greenland National Gallery of Art
Project: Greenland National Gallery
Client: Nunatta Eqqumiitsulianik Saqqummersitsivia
Size: 3000 square meters
Location: Nuuk, Greenland
Collaboration: TNT Nuuk, Rambøll Nuuk, Arkitekti, MIR, Glessner Group
Partner in charge: Bjarke Ingels, Andreas Pedersen
Project leader: Jakob Henke
Team: Daniel Selensky, Ji-wooden young Yoon, Gul Ertekin, Aleksander
Tokarz, Alessio Zenaro, Johan Cool