Gudrun Kristjansdottir’s art is based on close observation of rugged Icelandic landscapes. For more than forty years the artist has been translating, through various expressive means, her very personal perception of the skies, meadows and cliffs of the Nordic island. The house-atelier that the architects of Studio Bua designed for her all the way at the western end of the country constitutes, not surprisingly, a privileged spot from which to observe the nature that surrounds it. Nestled between a rocky cliff and the bay of Breiðafjörður, the house is the first step in the reactivation of a run-down farm, where the artist has decided to settle with her family.
Built around a load-bearing wooden frame, the house rests on the ruins of a barn, reinforced without removing its particular material roughness. This materiality, due for the most part to the inert concrete of the exterior enclosure and the lichens that cover it, contrasts with the smooth surfaces of the interiors, made of birch panels and pine slats. In response to the extreme climatic conditions, the architects deploy the best technology in terms of energy efficiency: triple-glazed windows, heat pumps and underfloor heating are the main tools to insulate the house thermally, without closing it in on itself. Added to these devices is the building’s external skin of corrugated steel, a material that has always been widely used in Iceland, as explained by Sigrún Sumarliðadóttir, co-founder of the studio, who focused on this construction technique and on the typology of the Icelandic farm for her dissertation at the University of Delft in the Netherlands.
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Founded in 1961 by Piera Peroni Abitare magazine has crossed the history of costume, architecture and design, international, following in its pages the evolution of our ways of life and how we inhabit places