Since the beginning of the year, our team has been working closely with Reykjavík Municipality to develop a set of guidelines for a planned residential neighbourhood, New Skerjafjörður.
The document will complement and strengthen the existing detail plan, offering a selection of pioneering solutions to ensure biodiversity, resiliency and high-quality public spaces as the area is to become a model district for vibrant, but sustainable and car-reduced neighbourhoods in Iceland’s capital.
We proposed a 'Gradient Landscape' vision that celebrates the return of the local coastal landscape into the streets, parks, squares and courtyards of the new neighbourhood. The removal of the airport is a unique opportunity to reintroduce the original landscape qualities that dominated the area before its construction: marshlands, coastal wetlands and bushy inland forests. The landscape strategy suggests layers of vegetation and ecosystems that gradually evolve from densely planted areas with trees and shrubbery in the north, to water collecting wetland towards low grasses by the coast, forming a unifying identity for New Skerjafjörður.
Read more about the project here.