Akureyri Town Hall

The brief was to extend and renovate the town hall of Akureyri so the council would have one common headquarter in the city. We were chosen as a “wildcard” in the competition.

The existing town hall has a unique footprint - it does not stand parallel to the nearby highway like every other building around it. Our goal was to enhance its position rather than trying to adjust the new volume to the streetscape. Therefore we created a coherent volume with a facade structure that tucks in the old and the new volume - almost like a scaffolding. Finally, a new public park was created surrounding the new town hall that further enhances its expression as a “pavilion in a park”.

Initially, the building hosted the Akureyri´s fire department with large openings for the fire trucks on the ground floor. These openings are awakened and partly reproduced, on both sides of the building, generating a very open and bright public ground floor. The ground floor ceiling is cladded with soundproofing fabric, colored red to reference the fire department.

The gables of the existing building are extended, the top floor is torn down and two new floor added on top. The new facade structure is made of steel and it is composed by horizontal flower boxes, blurring the boundary between the inside and the outside, as well as vertical columns that are cladded with rammed earth. The columns vary in size and shape generating a very dynamic facade in front of a rather homogeneous volume. The rammed earth has aggregates from the nearby mountains, minimizing its carbon footprint.

Status: Closed competition (Wildcard) - Honorable Mention

Colleagues: Decker Hjaltested Architects & Ólafur Baldvin Jónsson