These drawings are large (highly detailed).

The Icelandic architecture association and the town of Ísafjörður held a competition in 1996 for a rehabilitation of the single downtown street in Ísafjörður town, located on a reef in a deep  mountainous fjord. The street is shown below in red.  One side of the street is a fairly dense urban fabric while the other side is mostly deserted with a partly made landfill. The open side is scheduled for an out-of-context shopping-mall and its edge meant for a proposed access road. Presently the main street is as such seriously underdeveloped, while at the same time the town authorities plan to expand with suburbs farther away from the real town.

Instead of cosmetically modifying the main road to fit a certain look, Thordarson´s project investigated how one could complete the urban gaps and make some practical foundations for a actual street condition. His premise is that without completing the real urban fabric, there is not really a competition about a street.

Detail of the design proposal, showing the south end of the street, the waters edge and the access road along the water. Proposed buildings are shown in color while existing are in black and white. The road gets terminated in a square surrounded with various functions, here suggested as theater and shops. The square itself gets connected to the somewhat park-like waters edge. A walkway would thread along the edge of the water, in one portion go in towards town along a rising tide saltwater pond. The pond is proposed as a garden within the urban fabric.

Sketch of how the downtown street terminates in a square and the harbor. This is especially useful on days like "sailors day" where the town inundates with festivities.

A small portion of the ten foot long design drawing of the downtown street. strategegic but careful alterations and enlargements of existing building structures help complete the street and raise its occupancy rate with low-key architectural insertions. Certain sections of the street are sensitive to any modifications due to historical and cultural values.

Detail of the area surrounding the proposed central square. In the last decades it has been injected with prosthetic-like over scaled buildings such as the hotel (1) and the community center (2), each shown as parts of the square. Behind the hotel is the rising tide saltwater pool. Again, the colored buildings are proposed and the b/w are existing. The main portion of the urban fabric proposal is partly seen at the top right of the image.

Close up of the master plan section describing the downtown square. Elevations surround each side. The existing out-of-scale hotel and community center is shown mediated by 3-story high buildings, modified older ones, or altogether new. In the square sits a clock tower, visible from both main portions of the downtown street. The 3-story high clock tower serves as a hands-on community bulletin board.
 

Close up of the master plan portion showing the urban design for the landfill. Here, the existing town urbanity is respected and the shopping mall is rejected.   Back gardens are interconnected via walking paths, parking is along all streets as well as in the basements of the new buildings. The new streets provide vistas from the main street  towards the water.

A portion of the 10 foot long street drawing showing a street portion in the new urban site. As with any downtown, the first floors are commercial while the upper floors are residential or with offices. A small scale hotel (dubbed as the North Pole-Inn) is suggested as an alternative to the larger hotel. Note that the style of the buildings is pure characterization. The dense urban fabric is what is being proposed. The back yards would be accessible via pedestrian tunnels off the main street.

View up one of the proposed streets, and how it might possibly be characterized. The view is toward an existing bank.

Sketch of a section of the proposed walkway along the waters edge

All design work and drawings are created by Olafur Thordarson.
Þórður F. Ólafsson provided research and input on the proposal text.

© copyright Olafur Thordarson / Dingaling Studio, Inc. 1998-2001. All rights reserved. No information can be copied
from this web site without a written permission. Each design is copyrighted by  Olafur Thordarson/Dingaling Studio inc.