Architecture highlights climate change with astonishing iceberg views in Arctic Circle
One of the most harsh and dramatic landscapes on the planet, the Arctic Circle is the focus of a recent architectural wonder in Greenland, designed to highlight the effects of climate change. The Kangiata Illorsua - Ilulissat Icefjord Centre, designed by Dorte Mandrup, sits on the edge of the UNESCO-protected Greenland wilderness. The centre overlooks the Kangia Icefjord, 250 km north of the Arctic Circle, and was designed to blend effortlessly into the landscape. It offers a unique vantage point from which to experience the astonishing Icefjord and understand the dramatic consequences of climate change on the landscape. Described by founder and creative director, Dorte Mandrup as a snowy owls flight through the landscape", the aerodynamic, the building has a light structure, so it appears to levitate over the magnificent, rugged terrain - like an outstretched wing gently touching the bedrock. The shape frames the views towards the fjord while preventing snow build-up and creating a shelter from the snow and freezing winds. Ilulissat Icefjord Centre forms a habitable place for social interaction in this dramatic landscape, Mandrup says. Sitting between the town of Ilulissat and the wilderness beyond, it offers a vantage point from which to experience the vast, non-human scale of the Arctic, the transition between darkness and light, the midnight sun, and the Northern lights dancing across the sky. Despite the inhospitable winters, the centre was designed to be open all year round, as a meeting place for local residents, companies, politicians, climate researchers and tourists. It houses exhibitions, a film theatre, a cafe and shop as well as research and educational facilities. Mandrup says the Icefjord Centre tells the story of ice, of humankind and evolution on both a local and global scale, and relates to the history of time sitting lightly on the Greenlandic bedrock which is the oldest in the world. The complex structure of the 900m2 building consists of 52 skeletal steel frames, creating a boomerang shape, almost resembling the remains of an animal lying on the rocky terrain. This aerodynamic shape prevents the build-up of snow, enabling the wind to swipe snow away from the facade. In the spring, when the snow melts, the melting water follows its original path underneath the building into the Sermermiut Lake. The roof provides a natural extension of the areas hiking routes, leading visitors onto one of the best look-out spots to see the massive icebergs in the fjord and the surrounding landscape. At each end of the building there are also covered spaces, creating shelter, and gathering places. Mandrup says throughout the design of Ilulissat Icefjord Centre, there has been a profound focus on working responsibly and considerately with the environment. Around 80 percent of the steel is recycled and can be reused again in the future. At the same time, the steel ensures a lightweight structure which makes the impact on the ancient bedrock and its fragile flora and fauna minimal. Inside the centre, visitors can learn more about the nature and culture unfolding before their eyes. They can experience the journey of ice from the birth of the ice crystal in Greenland's cold cloud layer, to when it becomes part of the inland ice and finally moves towards the glacier and breaks off in icebergs. Also, how different Inuit cultures lived under these harsh conditions and how climate change manifests itself in the Arctic landscape. The exhibition, designed by JAC Studios, consists of a landscape of ice flakes where archaeological objects and films are exhibited in ice prisms of glass that visitors can move between. The ice prisms are created from ice blocks collected in the Kangia Ice Fjord, 3D-scanned, and mouth-blown in glass. Central to the exhibition are authentic ice core drillings taken from the ice sheet, they tell the story about our culture and climate from 124.000 years BC to the present. Sermeq Kujalleq is one of the fastest and most active glaciers in the world. It annually calves over 35 km3 of ice, which is 10% of the production of all Greenland calf ice, and more than any other glacier outside Antarctica. The architects say the combination of a huge icesheet and the dramatic sounds of a fast-moving glacial ice-stream calving into the fjord covered by icebergs makes for a dramatic and awe-inspiring natural phenomenon. An extraordinary feature is that the ice cap will calve and then the icebergs will sail out towards Disko Bay. This is always different: sometimes there is a huge iceberg; sometimes there are smaller ones, and then they will calve again and sail out into Disko Bay as icebergs.