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Winning collaboration selected for sculptural National Gallery of Greenland in Nuuk
A partnership between Bjarke Ingels Group, TNT Nuuk, Ramboll Nuuk and Arkitekti has been chosen by a unanimous jury panel as the winner of a competition to design a sculptural rendition for the National Gallery of Greenland in the country’s capital. The collaborative group beat fellow Nordic architects Snøhetta, Heikkinen-Komonen, Studio Granda and Tegnestuen Nuuk with its geometrically perfect circular concept.
Located on a steep slope on the lip of one of Greenland’s most scenic fjords, the winning design creates a protective ring around the main focus point – a central sculpture garden. An interior facade of clear glass separates the gallery space from the sculpture garden, simple and refined in contrast to the coarse white concrete of the external facade. Visitors will access the facility through a raised opening in the rough exterior into a lobby with 180° views across the sculpture gardens and natural beauty of the fjord beyond.
Bjarke Ingels, Founder and Partner at BIG explains: “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.”
The circular form affords a variety of flexible exhibition spaces, each different from its neighbours in terms of size and shape. Plans are to fill the museum with a combination of historical and contemporary local works, in an ‘institution that communicates the continuous project of documenting and developing the Greenlandic national identity through art and culture’.
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