THE OLD FINDS A NEW GROUND
The project involves building a new house on the lots at Vegamótastígur 7 and 9 in accordance with an amended site plan from 2008. In the building and what is foreseen to take place there you will find many threads from the past and present. The desing of the building is an attempt to reinvent preserving measures in city planning and to reconciliate the past and the present. Buyers who will only need their apartments as occasional dwellings may want to lease them to Crossroad House to maximise their returns gaining extra interest on their investment in addition to an expected modest increase in real estate price. Buyers of commercial spaces will have the same choice and can also have a say in the final design.
The original scheme was to build only on the lot Vegamótastígur 9, the adjoining lot being owned by others, but it was apparent that joining the lots would be preferable. This was indeed pointed out in the planning commitee of Reykjavik when the original scheme was presented in February 2007 and received there with enthusiasm. The company Efri-Vegamót Ltd. bought the adjacent lot for the purpose of designing a single building on both lots. The design involves a very unusual preservation of the old iron cladded timber house now standing at Vegamótastígur 9 and a reconstruction of the stone cottage demolished in the mid sixties at Vegamótastígur 7.
The architects, Studiogranda, had freedom as to what kind of a building would be suitable at this site. After a few proposals of rather conventional buildings the idea now formed emerged and was cleared with planning amendments by the city planning council in October 2008. This involves a completely new way of preserving and rejuvenating the city´s architectural heritage.
The size of the new house is within the boundaries of the planning scheme from 2002. The prerquisite for an amendment to the planning scheme in 2008 was therefore not increasing the permitted size but rather to align the new house within the historical context of the old house and to ensure that it would preserve some of the delicate and varied architectural features Reykjavik is renowned for. The new building doesn´t engulf the old houses but carries them on its shoulders, as if in a seat of distinction.
