CROSSROAD HOUSE
In downtown Reykjavík there is a new development taking place on two small lots at the corner of Vegamótastígur (Crossroad Alley) and Grettisgata (Grettir Street, named after one of the heroes of the Icelandic sagas). One is vacant since the demolition of a nineteenth century stone cottage in the mid sixties. A corrugated iron clad timber house, built in 1904 and inhabited by the descendants of the original family, occupies the other. The house is remarkable not only for its age (Reykjavík is a very young town) but also as Iceland‘s most renowned painter, Jóhannes Kjarval, lived and worked there as a young man. A frequent guest was the Nobel literary laureate Halldór Kiljan Laxness who wrote his first novel there.
A scheme underway proposes a multi-level shops and gallery space to the street with four floors of soundproofed flats above, many of which will serve as hotel apartments. The vegetated roof of this building is a new tranquil site for the house relocated in partnership with the rebuilt cottage. The new building is clad in a sheath of finely seamed flat copper with an-situ concrete attic that doubles as the foundation for the historic hamlet. Copper is used again at the upper levels in corrugated form replacing the vernacular iron, offset with the judicious use of glass in handrails and canopies.
The design has been featured in the media including articles in Architectural Review (May 2008, .pdf), ForumAID (August 2008) and Designboom.com as well as the local Morgunbladid (September 2008, .pdf).
The project and the new house itself takes it‘s name, Crossroad House, from a letter of the painter Johannes Kjarval to his mentor and master, Asgrimur Jonsson, from 1953 and fits one of the house‘s purposes of being a meeting place where the public and people from the arts, business and academia share and develop ideas together in an entrepreneurial spirit.
Flats and commercial space is available for prospective buyers and investors who can now be part of the project before the final stage of design and construction. Information at vego@vegamotahus.is.
