Outer Limits - Nuuk cultural center in Greenland

Architectural Review, The, Dec, 1999

As the ancients knew, bringing the heavens to earth is a dangerous strategy: here the Aurora Borealis is evoked to bring a sense of place and urbanity to Greenland.

We were puzzled by this building. Surely, the architects were too old to have made such a thing before they were 45. Subsequent close enquiries made clear that, indeed, the team was eligible and this, the cultural centre at Nuuk, Greenland became one of the commended schemes.

It is an attempt to make an urban place, a civic centre, in a culture which is unused to cities: Nuuk is still mainly a settlement of unjoined-up simplistic object buildings. The Centre is an effort to make a building which celebrates the place and its extreme climate.

No-one who has seen the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis, can ever forget the shimmering magic luminous curtains which fill the heavens and awe humanity. With great daring (and the subtle influence of Aalto) the architects have tried to bring a notion of the Aurora to earth in a building which tries to form the centre of the town. It includes the Greenland National Theatre, the School of Arts and a library, but more importantly, it is a meeting place for the community. We were initially much worried about its attempt to bring the heavens to earth in such a solid form, but became convinced after much study of the drawings that it really can (and from the photographs, apparently does) act as a civic centre for a community toying with urbanity.

ARCHITECT

SCHMIDT, HAMMER & LASSEN