Community spirit

Architectural Review, The, August, 1997 by Henry Miles

Iceland is not noted for its urban spaces, so the attempt to give Hafnarfjordur a sense of centre is memorable. The town lies some 10 kilometres south of the capital Reykjavik and is scattered over the scraped rocky landscape: little houses with bright green or red or even purple roofs are loomed over by a few slightly grim three- and four-storey municipal buildings. The harbour looks west to the Atlantic over the great bay and, behind it, the white spire of the church acts as a marker and focus from land and sea alike.

The church was built in 1914, and over 75 years later, in 1990, the church authorities and the commune set up a competition to build a new parish hall and a music school. Icelandic-Norwegian practice Teiknistofan Trod won with a scheme that links the parish accommodation to the church and uses the music school to sketch out a public space overlooking the harbour (and unfortunately a large road) in front of the church. Unlike the other public buildings in the settlement, scale is carefully considered, and elements of the new complex are stretched out south from the church as related but separate events which form a lively conversation on the harbour-side.

A glazed spine links the church to the parish rooms next door to the south and then connects to the circular parish hall which will act as concert centre when it is finished in 1998. The school is separated from the hall by a broad flight of urban steps which links the new church square with the town centre, and provides a pedestrian link from there to the harbour over a bridge that spans the pool which defines the west side of the new public space and is a remembrance of the original shore-line.

The double-height spine that links the parish accommodation connects to the church's south transept, with a glass wall that offers views over the harbour to the ocean, with its fish and ships, the source of the town and its prosperity. The spine tapers towards the north, focusing on the church, but as it approaches the hall, it becomes broad enough to be a public space in itself, where people can gather for coffee and conversation while looking out over the new square. It is important to remember that the photographs shown here give no concept of the extreme cold and darkness of the Icelandic winter, and the importance of having an enclosed public space in a small society. The place is made the more welcoming by its materials: a grooved birch ply ceiling, the floor of rich deep-black Icelandic basalt and a ruddy, largely opaque back wall which glows in low evening sunshine.

The parish rooms are consciously shaped like a ship, a thin orthogonal block set at right angles to the axis of the spine with a pointed prow which engages with the new public open space. In the lower part of the prow is a small classroom for confirmation candidates, clean, ordered and white and suffused by a milky light through glass block walls which allow the place to be luminous, while preventing the students from having distracting views out.

Above this is the most potent place so far completed; a small chapel which can be used when the church seems too big. It is dark and blue, with the altar at the wide end. Light pours down on its simple pale ash joinery from an east-facing chute in the roof; a slender stainless-steel cross stretches up to the light source.

It is too early to say exactly how the unfinished spaces will work, though they look promising. The semi-circular hall can be divided in two when necessary and its ash floor and walls are mainly illuminated by a long rooflight. The Icelandic textile designer Ina Salome has made a proposal for 22 large rugs which will be drawn down over the slatted walls when the volume is used for social gatherings; when the place is to be devoted to music, the rugs will be rolled up, giving acoustic properties appropriate to a chamber orchestra with a 150 person audience.

The music school (which is already in use, but will not be finished until autumn next year), is arranged along a double-height hall which looks out through a glass wall west over the fjord. Practice rooms will be built as rooms-within-rooms to avoid sound transmission and wall surfaces will be in curved birch ply to avoid acoustic standing waves.

The building may be in a remote place, but it certainly is not lacking in technical sophistication. It is plugged into the town's geothermal heating system, which provides water at 76-78 degrees Celsius to keep the building warm in winter, after which it still retains enough heat to ensure that the pool in front of the building will never freeze over in winter. External steps and routes are also kept ice-free geothermally. In the coldest weather, the pool will presumably steam gently. Fjord and sun will be seen through a shimmering mist, a protective magical veil enclosing the new focus of civic consciousness.