Dvergsreitur nominated for the Icelandic Design Awards

The Dwarf Square in the heart of Hafnarfjörður, designed by the architectural firms KRADS and TRÍPÓLÍ, together with Landmótun, has been nominated as Place of the Year at the 2023 Icelandic Design Awards.

The jury's reasoning states, among other things, that the square is a great credit to its authors, the client and the municipality, and that the densification of the built-up area is a great success. The project skilfully works with the scale and form of the neighbouring buildings, creating well-designed spaces between them despite the high density. The choice of materials is modern, yet it references the surrounding buildings and visually reduces the scale through the deliberate use of variation in materials. On closer inspection, the forms of the buildings playfully interact and even collide, giving them a nonchalant, if not downright comical, appearance.

Emphasis was placed on designing the new buildings on the site so that they blended in as well as possible with the appearance of the surrounding area. The aim of the design was to create a village-like atmosphere, a setting for a welcoming social life that both residents, who have their own area in a sheltered courtyard away from the streets, and visitors, who come for shopping and services on the ground floors, can enjoy.

New buildings fit in well with the built-up area.

Beautiful design

KRADS AND TRÍPOLÍ architecture practices
KRADS is an architectural practice based in Iceland and Denmark, led by architects Kristján Ern Kjartansson and Kristján Eggertsson. TRÍPÓLÍ is an architectural practice founded in 2012, whose owners are architects Andri Gunnar Lyngberg Andrésson and Guðni Valberg.

Landmótun is a landscape architecture and planning practice founded in 1994.

The awards ceremony for the 2023 Icelandic Design Awards will take place at Gróskua on 9 November, accompanied by a related talk.