Sisimiut, Greenland
“Even if I look at photographs now, I can categorize them by the time of day they were shot. Sometimes it appears blue, sometimes it is yellow,” states Konstantin Ikonomidis.
“And when you walk around it, it can become almost transparent, from other angles very textured, sometimes it seems to absorb light and other times to reflect it.”
Konstantin Ikonomidis, the Swedish architect but of Greek extraction, currently stationed in a small museum in Sisimiut, just above the Arctic Circle in Greenland, has designed and built Qaammat, a pavilion that celebrates the local landscape and the Inuit community.
The new glass pavilion was commissioned by UNESCO in 2019, around Sarfannguit, stretching from Aasivissuit to Nipisat, where UNESCO declared the area a World Heritage site in 2018—Greenland’s third.
The project he designed is called Qaammat, which features two curved walls of glass brick, a kind of striking shelter-come-cairn or permanent “pavilion” as he calls it.
The new glass pavilion was commissioned by UNESCO is intended as a celebration of the local landscape, cultural as well as physical, and the Inuit community’s connection with that landscape (Greenland is almost 90 percent Inuit or European-Inuit).
“UNESCO wanted to collaborate on this project,” says Ikonomidis, “so we visited Sarfannguit to look for a potential site for an installation.”
He wanted the work to be fixed and permanent: ‘The budget was really low, but it is so beautiful there and I wanted to bring attention to the village.”
The pavilion’s undulating walls are made up of five tons of opaque glass bricks attached to metal poles, sunk into rock, a method borrowed from local house building traditions.
The two walls have two narrow openings, allowing for a kind of intimacy and exposure at the same time.
Ikonomidis has been in Greenland since 2017, based in the capital Nuuk before the move to Sisimiut (population of about 5,600), the country’s second city.
Ikonomidis has been fascinated by the Inuit’s house-building traditions and the extreme climates of Greenland—the world’s largest island, located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark.
The majority of its residents are Inuit, whose ancestors migrated from Alaska through Northern Canada, gradually settling across the island by the 13th-Century.
“I was asked to make some kind of small house for the Nuuk Nordisk Culture Festival,” states Ikonomidis, “and I didn’t want to just make a beautiful house you just walk into and walk out. I was trying to go a little bit beyond the obvious.”
Ikonomidis came up with Qamutit, a conceptual sled-house.
“At the time, I was building a traditional kayak in the Greenlandic style, where you actually tie things together with ropes. And that structure is mostly tied together in the same way.”
“The experience of being in or around the pavilion is different depending on the weather or what season or time of day you are there,” he continues.
“I was actually surprised by how much it changes. Even if I look at photographs now, I can categorize them by the time of day they were shot. Sometimes it appears blue, sometimes it is yellow.”
“And when you walk around it, it can become almost transparent, from other angles very textured, sometimes it seems to absorb light and other times to reflect it.”
“There is a sense of its power here because everything is oversized, with these big mountains. There is a respect, a sensitivity to it but also a sense of its vulnerability.”
“It’s there in the local mythology. And then I came up with the idea of using glass. It had that sensitivity and vulnerability, a contrast with the rock. And of course, you also get the reflections and the play with light, and it looks like ice. It was a win-win.”
Project: Qaammat
Architect: Konstantin Ikonomidis
Clients: UNESCO
Photographers: Julien Lanoo
