Worth the wait

We were surprised to hear that, until recently, the Icelandic metropolis of Reykjavik was unable to host large-scale cultural events due to the lack of a suitable building. This recently changed and it turns out the city’s new concert hall really was something worth waiting for.

The 1800-seater hall, with three smaller halls, was completed in August last year. Named the Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Centre, the building was inspired by Iceland’s defining forces of nature. This pictorial transformation of typical Icelandic natural phenomena into built architecture incorporates tenets of art, architecture and the country’s traditions.

The seamless interplay of local and global influences is reflected by the designers involved: Henning Larsen Architects and Batteríið Architects from Denmark and Iceland, and acoustics designers from the New-York-based firm Artec Consultants, who all worked together to create this new architectural landmark. Of particular importance to the project was Danish-Icelandic artist Ólafur Elíasson, who created the design for the building’s unique glass shell and its illumination, which was implemented in collaboration with Austrian lighting company Zumtobel. Ólafur’s lighting concept was based on the desire to set the stage for light as a transcendent event while the source of light remains invisible.

The multi-faceted crystal building’s facades are inclined at various angles, resulting in reflection effects that make some surfaces appear opaque while others allow deep insights into the building’s interiors. Uniformly distributed across the honeycomb-like façade, individual glass panels sparkle mysteriously in green, yellow, orange and their complementary colours. Dichroic glass was used to create this spellbinding effect, as it either reflects or lets certain wavelenghts of light pass, depending on the viewer’s perspective, the weather, time of day and season.

The southern façade comprises a total of 1000 prism-shaped glass pieces stacked on top of each other. These 12-sided “quasi-bricks” are also made of sharp-edged hollow steel and are inspired by the columnar basalt cliffs originating from volcano eruptions that are common in Iceland.

The interior lights are another aesthetic phenomena. A new lighting system was designed especially for the building. Even the most attentive observer would struggle to find the source of the LED lights, which are mounted inside the prismatic structure.

What’s so special about these invisibly laid luminaires with a length of barely 1.37m and a total output of 13.2W each, is their shape, which results from the continuation of the linear geometry of the modules and the smallest possible mounting height.

From the most minute details to the larger scale elements of the building, the Harpa is sure to excite and captivate way before audiences take their seats for the shows and conferences that are already taking place there.

More information: http://en.harpa.is/, www.zumtobel.com