Track The Glacier

Tourism in Iceland has dramatically increased the recent years where people go on a “pilgrimage” through the extreme environment in search for an extraordinary experi­ence. Tourists pass by shelters, services and different kind of facilities who are often in great contrast to its setting, polluting the phenomena of the place. This kind of alienation is the fuse for this project. It calls for investigating architecture who blurs the boundary between the setting and the archi­tecture in order to enhance the experience of a place.

Jökulsárlón is an enormous, calving glacier lagoon in the southern region of Iceland that attracts thousands of visitors every month due to its dynamic situation. The site is constantly changing, shaped by the weather and the re­treating glacier, extending both the time and the scale of the site. At the same time, the site is under a heavy pressure of mass tourism that has a negative impact on people´s visitation, where the current facilites are totally oblivious of the situation.

That is why this master thesis explores the architectural potentials of celebrating the dynamics and the scale of such an extreme context. It is an attempt to respond to the mass tourism yet preserving and enhancing the unique experience of the site.

The thesis proposes a journey between four diverse structures around the lagoon, connected by a system of large columns. The aim is to explore ways to make each structure narrate a story of its situation through its placement in the landscape, the use of local material, skylights and by celebrating the different phases of water at the site.
The project results in a physical and a mental journey that guides the visitor through the various phenomenon of the site, prolonging their experience as well as distributing the pressure on the landscape. It is a way to challenge the modern tourist facility by making it more informative and experience based - not just as a viewing plat­form or an object that illuminates the dramatic topography but also as a tool that exposes the setting. In that way, the design is not only serving its practical needs but also addressing the changes that the site goes through — both socially and architecturally.

Status: Academic Project - Master Thesis

“… what is that glacier other than liquid that soon will melt and evaporate?”

A translation of the song
“Fjallaloft” by Moses Hightower.