ICELAND MUSEUM
The Museum is conceived as two shimmering fields of slender vertical columns supporting an elevated mass. The fields extend into the landscape and create a dense hypostyle of piezoelectric oscillating energy collectors. Iceland is famed for Its green energy and environmental protections. This project seeks to build on that mandate and become and self-sustaining energy plant and negative carbon building. The energy hypostyle also creates a visual manifestation of the volcanic nature of Iceland by its movement and dynamism relative to the museum patron’s experience. The main axis that organizes the project derives from the location of Hverfjall volcano to the South.
The building utilizes the column field to diffuse light from the low and ever changing Icelandic sun. The resulting effect of diffuse natural light allows for an entirely open main level exhibition hall. The space is infused with natural light while not allowing direct harsh light with the exception of sun relationships of due East and West in Winter months, when sunlight is at a premium and welcomed.
The column field also structurally supports the upper level and roof as well as further piezoelectric columns or the roof maintaining the .6m x .6m grid that creates the dictum and organizational underlayment for all building elements. Flexibility is given to the Exhibition Hall by way of eight sliding panels which use the structural hypostyle adjacent to the space for storage on plain sight.
ICELAND MUSEUM
YEAR 2024
ICELAND
Unbuilt
The upper level simultaneously nestles into the hypostyle and, on the North and South boundaries, breaks from it. The upper level houses the offices and café in the form of an elevated courtyard with the exhibition hall as its “open” center. The rigor of the column grid is broken at the terminus of the spatial sequence at the dining space of the café allowing commanding views of Hverfjall volcano to the South.
The spectacle and dynamism of the column field contrasts with the placid Icelandic landscape and it is only when compared with the volatile and historically dramatic geology does the building find it alluring relationship with the site and context.