Danish Architects BIG Win Another Big Contract for Greenland's National Gallery

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(NUUK, GREENLAND) -- This is a dateline I've never had the chance to write before, but in following the accomplishments of the Danish architects BIG, I have to do it now because they've won the competition to design the National Gallery of Art of Greenland in the country's capital, Nuuk.

Together with local partners TNT Nuuk, Ramboll Nuuk, and Arkitekti, BIG was unanimously selected in a competition of six proposals, all of them from Scandinavian firms. The challenge was exciting. It's not every day that architects get to design a building that is not only iconic but is part of an iconic setting.

The 3000 square meter National Gallery of Art will have a unique location, on a slope overlooking one of Greenland's dramatic fjords. From that site, the new museum will combine historical and contemporary art of the country in one dynamic institution.

"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," said Tuusi Josef Motzfeldt, from the National Gallery.

"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, awakens 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," he concluded.

As a projection of a geometrically perfect circle onto the steep slope, the new gallery is conceived as a courtyard building that combines a pure geometrical layout with a sensitive adaptation 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," explained Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Partner, BIG. "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."

The slope opens 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 acquire weathering over time and adjust to the local conditions, while the circular inner glass façade will consist of a simple and refined frame which contrasts the rough nature and complements the beautiful view.

"The building will with its simplistic coarseness and harmony with the landscape become a symbol of current independent Greenlandic artistic and architectural expression," according to 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. Visitors enter the exhibition through a covered opening created by a slight lift in the façade into a lobby with a 180 degree panoramic view towards the sculpture garden and the fjord as well as access to the common museum functions like ticket counters, coat check, boutique, and a café.

The new gallery will also create more activity at the waterfront because the whole area is interconnected by a path which like the museum, follows the shifting inclinations of the terrain. Locals and visitors will be able to admire the clear shape of the gallery which looks like a sculpture or a piece of land‐art.

"The 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," said Ingels.
 

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