THE VIGDÍS FINNBOGADÓTTIR INSTITUTE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
Yesterday we announced the results from the Architectural Competition for a new institute at the University of Iceland. This institute is named after our ex-president Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (web page here). Vigdis was the director of our City Theatre when I met her first as a kid with my father who was working there. Since I have followed her route, she was the French teacher of mine (a few times) and my sister in college before and stood for president of Iceland and became the first elected lady president in the world.
Her strength was always language and culture and the institute in the university says: “The Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute of Foreign Languages is a research institute working within the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Iceland. The Institute is a research centre for scholars who teach modern languages and cultures, the classical languages, and translation studies.”
I did offer to be on the jury of the architectural competition on behalf of the Association of Icelandic Architects since this issue is very much on my behalf, both brought up in the city theatre and as an architect and professor of architecture.
We, on the jury took our work seriously and spent days going over the over 40 proposals that took part in the competition but I was never uncertain about what proposal was the most appropriate one. Yesterday we opened the competition and announced the winners, a group of strong architects in Iceland supported by an older and experienced gang. I am pleased about this result and will be happy to follow the construction over the coming next two years. The building is very well planned and organized, simple and humble while shining class like our ex-president. This architecture will lift the area that has been a sad open car park landscape.
Congratulations arkitektur.is and thank you for your excellent entry in the competition.
Here are the results publication of all the entries to the competition in pdf format.
May 17, 2012
Posted in: ARCHITECTURE, DESIGN, ICELAND
